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The world’s bee population has become extinct, rendering all life almost impossible. Except for two areas, known as the Dead Zone and the Green Zone, where the Vulnerable and the Immune live close together – but worlds apart. The Dead Zone is as it sounds; practically lifeless, with no colour, and with its inhabitants, theVulnerable, barely scraping together an existence. The Green Zone, on the other hand, is luscious; sustaining plant, animal and human life in abundance. The Immune, who live there, want for nothing; their soil is fertile and their water is crystalline clear. They have everything. Instead of sharing their wealth with the colony just yards away from them, the Immune horde their bounty; willing to only pass on left-overs to the starving and disease ridden Vulnerable colony. And why is this? Because the Immune have a natural immunity to the stings of a new breed of bees. Bees that can kill with just one sting.
Once a year, the 17 year-olds of both colonies come together in the giant hexagonal-shaped Betadome, where they are all put to the test against the mercy of the bees. Will they show a natural immunity to the bees’ deadly stings, or will they react and need the life-saving injection to save their lives? Either way, most of the children will become Confirmed as Vulnerable, either returning to their life or acclimatising to a new life of abject poverty. Only a handful, at best, will be Confirmed as naturally Immune; and the chances are, they’ve already been born in the Green Zone. It’s hard to not to imagine their terror as they enter that deadly arena, and even easier to imaging the shock of Dead-Born’s Echo when she’s stung, but has no reaction to the venom of the bee.
Harvest Day is the first of a new series of books from the minds of Tamar Sloan and Heidi Catherine, and it’s immediately gripping. This isn’t just a New Adult Dystopian nightmare, it’s also part mystery and part thriller. Woven through the book is an under-current of something insidious; something terrible that is happening and that only Echo has the wiles to uncover. As with most of Sloan and Catherine’s previous novels, there’s a slow burning romance in there too; but will Echo be able to trust the Green-Born River enough to let him in?
Although, in the past, I’ve given their work much deserved ‘5 Moon Ratings’, Harvest Day is undoubtedly their best work yet. I was absolutely gripped, reading this extraordinary novel – from the very first chapter. I can barely wait for the next book in the series!
S. A.
I read Harvest Day after downloading it myself on Kindle. It is available to read for free on Kindle Unlimited, or to buy and keep, by clicking on the name of the book.
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