Matched is nothing like Hunger Games except dystopia. It actually, weirdly, has more in common with ... oh shit, the book that Lois Lowry wrote where everyone gets placed in a job? And he was the.....not seeker, but the repository for all feelings?
Shit. My brain is mush. Matched had slightly more in common with that.
A good LA based dystopia that I thought was interesting was Starters by Lissa Price. Old people rent out and take over young people's bodies.
That's it! Thanks, Sophia.
A Summer to Die,
her first book, is still one of my all-time favorites. Still makes me cry, too. And
Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye
(about an adopted girl who goes in search of her birth mother) is just as good.
But those were my YA era. I didn't keep up after that -- I've still never read
The Giver,
although I'd like to.
The Giver was dystopia before it was a thing in YA. The same with MT Anderson's Feed which is Ah-May-ZING.
I'm swiping my way through a book written by the parent of a former student. Not impressed and should just abandon. Then I'm going to read Wildwood, which is middle grade fiction I think.
Some days, I miss reading for the awards committee because it forced me to increase my breadth of what I read in middle grades fiction and YA.
Wait--so all YA dystopias *are* the same, or they might as well be the same? That's what I don't understand. If you keep selling A as B, you do risk a backlash.
Seriously? This is Hollywood. Instead of development hell, this is development fast-track to jump on the pile. Does this really surprise you?
I should add, that I'm in the middle of (and enjoying the hell out of) TALES FROM DEVELOPMENT HELL, which has my Hollywood cynicism on code red.
I suspect there's a companion book that could be written such as TALES FROM DEVELOPMENT TOO-FAST TRACK for getting like minded movies out for things that were phenoms.
The same with MT Anderson's Feed which is Ah-May-ZING.
Oh boy, I disagree. I wanted to like it! It has a great premise!
The
Uglies
series was pre-Hunger Games YA dystopia that seemed to be pretty popular but didn't make as big a splash, but Scott Westerfeld said that the books have been selling a lot more since
Hunger Games.
The Uglies series was pre-Hunger Games YA dystopia that seemed to be pretty popular but didn't make as big a splash
Loved that series. Although I loved Westerfeld's Midnighters series even more.
I liked it all right. I found it kind of mediocre overall, and I didn't really like the protagonist. The fourth book was actually my favorite.