After the End

Seventeen-year-old Juneau has grown up isolated in the postapocalyptic Alaskan wilderness, a pristine landscape of “crystalline fields veined with frozen streams.” When her clan is kidnapped, she discovers that the nuclear war they supposedly fled never took place. Struggling to disentangle truth from lies, Juneau plunges into an unfamiliar world to rescue her clan, aided by her connection to the Yara, a mystical nature-force. In this series opener, Plum (the Die for Me books) introduces a resilient, crossbow-wielding, part-Chinese heroine, then forces this driven survivor to cooperate with a spoiled rich kid. Miles Blackwell seeks to redeem himself in the eyes of his CEO father by capturing Juneau, but he’s instead pulled into her attempt to find her people. Misunderstandings and betrayals abound as Juneau and Miles set off on a road trip through the West, coming to appreciate each other in a slow-moving, believable romance. Alternating first-person narrators let readers get to know intense Juneau from inside and out, while offering a window into Miles’s gradual maturation. Ages 13–up. [em]Agent: Stacey Glick, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. (May) [/em]