So good! I would recommend this book to all of my friends who enjoyed Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games et. al. In a world where a dangerous bio-weapon has wiped out the entire population of people between the ages of 20 and 80, and where those 80+ Enders have all the power (under 20's, Starters, cannot vote and "unclaimed minors" are institutionalized), Starters are forced to live on the streets, running for their lives and scavenging for everything. One girl, Callie, in an effort to save her young, sickly brother, makes the difficult decision to rent her body out to Enders who are willing to pay substantially to be young again for a while. Of course, something goes terribly wrong and Callie is in danger. It's a wild ride.

AMAZING is the word! I didn't expect much out of Starters. I thought it would be mildly entertaining and you know, dystopian, but "mildly entertaining and dystopian" is every other YA book these days which Starters most definitely isn't! I did not expect it to be one heck of an adrenaline rush from the beginning till the very end! The twists and the turns were so unexpected as I squirmed and squealed and towards the end, shrieked with disbelief! Starters will hook you in and keep you hooked- there is no doubt about that!

I won't be able to leave a review for this book; I requested it in a past lifetime of my NetGalley use (about ten years ago!) and it no longer fits with my reading interests. If I ever do end up reading it I'll come back and update this!

Due to a glitch with the book file, I was unable to read this book. I regret that I am unable to give a further review.

This was pretty entertaining, if a bit sketchy on some of the details. Still, there's a very interesting twist at the end that I didn't see coming!

Starters by Lissa Price is a popular read for my high school students. Anything post apocalyptic leaves the shelves quickly. Starters is unique as anyone between the age of 20 and 60 are wiped out. Will Tyler and her little brother survive?

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this book.

I was super excited to get my hands on this book, it had been an anticipated read, but sadly this one just didn't fit for me. I think it was more the writing style than anything.

[Disclaimer: I was sent a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley for review purposes.]

I was supposed to review this a couple years ago, but had some trouble figuring the whole NetGalley thing out, then lost my copy, so had to borrow it from the library to review.

I really didn't understand this book. The world building was next to minimal, the only premise is that a Spore War happened where only kids and the elderly survived because they got vaccinated. Now only rich kids are allowed to live "free," while the rest of them resort to squatting and living on the street, or being captured by Marshals and sent to "institutions," which are essentially prison for kids. The elderly are all in control, they hold all the jobs, and they hold all the power. They're essentially crabby power-hungry toddlers who really need a nap and a Snickers bar so they can act like real human beings.

People under 19 aren't allowed to work, by law. This makes absolutely no sense. At one point it's explained that, as the elderly were living longer (up to age 200 in this time period), they needed a steady source of income so they couldn't have all the kids taking their jobs. Only, with the majority of the population dead, wouldn't there be more than enough jobs to go around? And why on earth would the elderly want to imprison, kill, maim and otherwise disenfranchise the younger people, when those younger people are going to be the ones who will need to take over eventually? No sense whatsoever.

Then we find out that there's this new hush-hush company that works on referrals where a teenager can "donate" their body for an old person to take a spin in it for a while. The kid gets paid a lot of money after they sleep for a few weeks, and an old person gets to be young for a while. Sounds all peachy keen, except for the fact that these old people do pretty reckless things with these bodies, and not every "donor" is a willing one.

Callie, the main character, becomes a donor because she's destitute, her brother has a lung disease, and they need money to survive. She's desperate so she agrees to the terms. Only after her second rental, which took a week, does she find out she's going under for a whole month. And this time she's saddled with an old lady with a vendetta. See, the old lady, Helena, lost her granddaughter to this company, and she wants revenge. And she's going to use Callie's body to get it. After Helena has Callie's brain chip rewired so that the no-kill switch is turned off, the whole thing destabilizes and Callie wakes up in a club surrounded by a bunch of real teens and "Enders," the elderly, in donor bodies. She's disoriented, starts hearing Helena's voice in her head, and goes off on a wild adventure to reclaim her life and keep Helena from using her body to commit murder.

OK I admit, it sounds exciting. But it really wasn't. Obviously there's going to be a love interest (or two), things get complicated because Callie is pretending to be Helena but knows nothing about her, Helena is stuck in the body switching company's building trying to get Callie to kill someone for her, etc. It's a mess. By the end, Callie's blabbing to anyone who will listen to her, and somehow all these people believe her and come to her aid.

Basically, this whole book is completely unbelievable. I could not get over the whole societal hierarchy, which in turn spoiled the rest of the story for me. The world building made no sense, and so the story itself made no sense within that context. I have too many other hopefully good books to read to bother with the conclusion in Enders, but if I ever get bored I'll consider picking it up just to find out if Callie's dad is really dead, and who The Old Man (the man behind the body switching company) really is. I have my theory, but it's probably wrong because again, nothing makes sense. Right now though, the sequel goes to the back of the to-read line.