Book Review (117). Survive - Alex Morel

Survive

by Alex Morel

Publication: July 2012

Publisher: Hardie Grant Egmont

Pages: 259

Genre: Action/Adventure

Age Appropriate: Young Adult

Jane is running away from everything. From the facility she’s been living in, from her pain, from her guilt, from life. She boards a plane to Montclair, New Jersey, though her destination isn’t important – she doesn’t plan to be alive when the plane lands.


Jane has devised the perfect suicide. She’ll fall asleep on the plane and never wake up. But as she’s reaching for her pills in the tiny bathroom, the plane hits turbulence and everything goes black.

Jane wakes amid the charred wreckage of a plane crash on a snowy mountaintop, and discovers just one other survivor – a boy named Paul. Lost in a perilous, icy landscape, with little food and water, their chance of survival seems small. But as the pair unite against the vast wilderness, Jane discovers a reason to fight for her life.

My Thoughts.

I loved that Morel didn't end this book the way that most Y/A  books do in the sense that not every story has a happy ending and it just adds more realism to the story.

This book does touch on serious topics such as depression and suicide but is done in a tasteful manner and it explains a lot of back-story concerning Jane.

This book is action packed pretty much from the get go, and you never know what will happen next.

It's not that far into the story when the plane crash occurs, just as Jane is about to ingest the pills in the bathroom the plane nosedives and starts it's plummet towards the ground, when she wakes up she finds the plane crashed on a mountaintop in three pieces, everybody is dead except for Paul, a boy who was seated in the seat next to hers.

At first their relationship is a bit love/hate and their comments to each other had me laughing to myself.

'What if you fall?" I call down. He looks up and smiles. 'It'll be romantic, Jane. We'll die together, like Romeo and Juliet.' I take a big gulp of air and breathe out. What an ass.

'Jane Solis,' he shouts, still flat on his back, 'you pull like a donkey.' Like I said, what an ass.

'No-one's ever touched them before. I mean nobody I didn't pay to touch them.' 'You employed some male hookers to touch your scars?' 

It's not long before Jane and Paul start to depend on each other and slowly start to develop feelings for each other, you wish nothing will come to harm for these two and that they make it off the mountain and that they both make it home safely.

But with the huge possibility of hypothermia, no food and treacherous conditions in the snow and freezing cold the odds are against them.

This book had me on the edge of my seat, and if that wasn't enough it even had me in tears, this book took me on a roller-coaster ride and it was hard at times to put the book down.

I loved this book and can't wait to see whats up next for Morel.

I give this 4/5.

A Big Thanks To Hardie Grant Egmont Australia.