"I can't think of a single thing I didn't like about this book." — Miss Remmers
From Amazon.com...
"How far would you go to protect your family?
Ann Brooks never thought she’d have to answer that question. Then she found her limits tested by a crisis no one could prevent. Now, as her neighborhood descends into panic, she must make tough choices to protect everyone she loves from a threat she cannot even see. In this chillingly urgent novel, Carla Buckley confronts us with the terrifying decisions we are forced to make when ordinary life changes overnight.
A year ago, Ann and Peter Brooks were just another unhappily married couple trying–and failing–to keep their relationship together while they raised two young daughters. Now the world around them is about to be shaken as Peter, a university researcher, comes to a startling realization: A virulent pandemic has made the terrible leap across the ocean to America’s heartland.
And it is killing fifty out of every hundred people it touches.
As their town goes into lockdown, Peter is forced to return home–with his beautiful graduate assistant. But the Brookses’ safe suburban world is no longer the refuge it once was. Food grows scarce, and neighbor turns against neighbor in grocery stores and at gas pumps. And then a winter storm strikes, and the community is left huddling in the dark.
Trapped inside the house she once called home, Ann Brooks must make life-or-death decisions in an environment where opening a door to a neighbor could threaten all the things she holds dear.
Carla Buckley’s poignant debut raises important questions to which there are no easy answers, in an emotionally riveting tale of one family facing unimaginable stress."
"The Things That Keep Us Here" is a surprisingly riveting novel; I couldn't put it down. Not only that, but this book genuinely had me thinking and analyzing my own life. While it could be read for purely enjoyment, it can also be read in depth and be analyzed.
Even while reading this book I was talking about it to my family, friends, and residents, anyone who would listen really. I would ask them, "How far would you go for the ones you love? Would you steal? Would you lie? Would you become savage?" Like Peter and Ann in the novel, I'd like to think that even when my children were starving I'd be able to resist such temptations, but I'm not sure I could.
This book is so good because it's so realistic; whether it be bird flu, swine flu, or whatever comes next — this could happen. After reading this book, I think we're lucky it hasn't happened yet!
The characters were great and believable and the plot kept reading (I loved getting to the end of a chapter because there was always something that kept the story moving). The language and tone of the novel was wonderful, even the scientific parts. When science was involved, I would have argued that Buckley herself was a budding scientist! It sounded believable and arguable — which only added to the realism of the novel. For the life of me I can't think of a single thing I don't like about this book — which doesn't happen a lot.
Highly recommended, I will be keeping this book. I'll put it onto my classroom shelves, but it's definitely suited for the upper grades or reading levels. I don't see any reason why an advanced reader wouldn't like this novel as much as I did.
Thank you so much to "Pump Up Your Book Promotions " for sending me a review copy.