Book Review: Undertow by Michael Buckley

Book #1 of the Undertow Series
Genre: YA Fantasy Sci-Fi
Publication: May 2015 by HMH Books for Young Readers
Acquisition: Bought

Synopsis:

Sixteen-year-old Lyric Walker’s life is forever changed when she witnesses the arrival of 30,000 Alpha, a five-nation race of ocean-dwelling warriors, on her beach in Coney Island. The world’s initial wonder and awe over the Alpha quickly turns ugly and paranoid and violent, and Lyric’s small town transforms into a military zone with humans on one side and Alpha on the other. When Lyric is recruited to help the crown prince, a boy named Fathom, assimilate, she begins to fall for him. But their love is a dangerous one, and there are forces on both sides working to keep them apart. Only, what if the Alpha are not actually the enemy? What if they are in fact humanity’s only hope of survival? Because the real enemy is coming. And it’s more terrifying than anything the world has ever seen.

Action, suspense, and romance whirlpool dangerously in this cinematic saga, a blend of District 9 and The Outsiders.

(from Goodreads)

5 / 5 Stars

I've been a Buckley fan ever since I devoured his Sisters Grimm series and I have to say, I was a little worried about Undertow, being his first YA book and all. Happy to report my fears were unjustified because this book rocked!

I really like this book. Like, I like like it. Like if this book and I went to middle school together and it wrote me a note that said "Do you like me? Check Yes, No or Maybe" I would use the biggest red marker I could find and check the hell out of that "Yes" box and draw hearts all over it before handing it back.

Undertow is part mystery, part adventure, part romance.

And it's weird!

And it all really works together.

You know how we, as the advanced, sophisticated humans we like to think our selves to be, have only explored less then 10% of the ocean? Ever wonder what might be in that other 90% or so percent? I'm pretty sure Buckley did and what he came up with was pretty freaken awesome.

Somewhere in that vast sea of the unknown, live the Alpha. They are angry, rough, ugly, totally unapologetic and harder then anything to understand ocean-dwelling warriors. Or rather, they were ocean-dwelling. For reasons that are pretty explosively reveled as the book progresses, they have left their ocean homes and taken up residence on Coney Island.

If this series isn't on your wishlist, it should be. It's a YA book without a lot of the stuff that I tend to not like about YA and all of the stuff that makes YA so great.