For fans of Jeff Zentner and Katie Henry comes a thrilling and funny debut about a teen raised in a doomsday community who plots her escape with the boy from the bunker next door. Always be ready for the worst day of your life. This is the mantra that Becca Aldaine has grown up with. Her family is part of a community of doomsday preppers, a neighborhood that prioritizes survivalist training over class trips or senior prom. They’re even arranging Becca’s marriage with Roy Kang, the only eligible boy in their community. Roy is a nice guy, but he’s so enthusiastic about prepping that Becca doesn’t have the heart to tell him she’s planning to leave as soon as she can earn a full ride to a college far, far away. Then a devastating accident rocks Becca’s family and pushes the entire community, including Becca’s usually cynical little sister, deeper into the doomsday ideology. With her getaway plans thrown into jeopardy, the only person Becca can turn to is Roy, who reveals that he’s not nearly as clueless as he’s been pretending to be. When Roy proposes they run away together, Becca will have to risk everything—including her heart—for a chance to hope for the best instead of planning for the worst. Gr 9 Up-Mangle's debut provides an eye-opening, gut-wrenching look into the world of survivalists. All 17-year-old Becca Aldaine wants to do is graduate, leave home, and never look back, once she secures a full-ride scholarship. As she waits for news from Carnegie Mellon, Becca dreams of fleeing her insular community, where intense, dangerous survivalist drills and detailed, mind-numbing bunker inventory are the norm-not prom or parties. But when a tragedy befalls Becca's family, all her plans are thrown into chaos, as she must now worry about leaving her 10-year-old sister Katie behind with an increasingly unmoored mother. As her arranged relationship with her boyfriend Roy-from a neighboring prepper family-begins to change, Becca must weigh what means most to her. Mangle's evocative prose creates a vivid world where readers will wince at Becca's emotionally abusive family life and wonder at her innate steeliness and ability to survive. The well-drawn characters are three-dimensional, particularly Becca and Roy, whose Korean background is folded well into the narrative. The ending is exquisitely plotted down to the second and closes the story perfectly. Becca's ethnicity isn't stated. VERDICT Fans of compelling realistic fiction like that of Courtney Summers will love Becca's journey as they cheer for her to succeed against incredible odds.-Elissa Bongiorno, Washington, DCα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. "It’s not the end of the world, but it’s high drama nonetheless." ― Kirkus Reviews * "Mangle’s evocative prose creates a vivid world...Fans of compelling realistic fiction like that of Courtney Summers will love Becca’s journey as they cheer for her to succeed against incredible odds." ― School Library Journal, starred review Bethany Mangle is the author of the Prepped , All the Right Reasons , and Conditions of a Heart . When she isn’t writing, she enjoys spoiling her dogs, playing video games, and spending time with her unbearably nerdy husband. She moves too much to put a location in her bio ever again. Visit her at BethanyMangle.com. Chapter 1 1 EVEN THE CHILDREN COME TO watch us drown. Four of us line the banks of the duck pond in insulated clothes, shivering through alternating spikes of adrenaline and fear. Rays of waning sunlight speckle the black surface of the water, punctuated by ripples of movement from the fish unfortunate enough to reside here. Dad waits for the entire community to assemble before launching into his usual pre-training speech. He adjusts the collar of his fleece-lined jacket and clears his throat against the side of his fist. “Our focus today is cold-water survival. We don’t know if we’ll ever fall through ice or have to wade across a river to search for food.” “Right on!” someone shouts. The cheer electrifies the rest of the group. They surge forward, as if eager to watch my misery up close. From the rear, a woman’s voice calls out our unofficial motto: “Always be ready for the worst day of your life!” Dad shoots a withering glare in the direction of the speakers. Our neighbors shrink away, chastened. “As I was saying, disaster can strike at any time, folks. That means winter. That means tougher hunting. That means walking farther and working harder to stay alive.” He turns to us, gesturing at the colorful flotation devices piled by the bank. “During this scenario, your objective is to don a life preserver and conserve your body heat for ten minutes. The water is forty-one degrees.” I glance at my sister as she peeks out from around my mother’s waist. When no one’s looking, she mouths, Always be ready , complete with a dramatic eye-roll and a sassy wobble of her head.