Title: Gone (Gone #1)
Author: Michael Grant
Genre: YA Dystopia
Format: Hardcover
Length: 560 pages
Publisher: Katherine Tegan Books
Publish Date: June 24, 2008

Dislocation of body parts, Bullying, Murder,
Torture, Eating Disorder, Suicide, Mental Health Decline,
Sexual Abuse (no explicit scenes), Homophobia,
Racial Slurs, Massacre, Autistic Slurs

Chumash Indian, Black, Chinese, Vietnamese, Autistic,
Mexican

So I’m finally getting to this one, thanks to Mandy @ Book Nook Mandy. Be sure to check out her YouTube channel, especially her video on why she recommends this series. I had to try it just for her, so thank Mandy for this review because it wouldn’t have happened without her.

Sam is a Mary Sue. Just kidding. He’s just a 14 year old that knows how to take charge during a crisis, especially when his bus driver has a heart attack and he has to make sure the bus full of kids doesn’t go over the edge of a cliff. That’s how he got his reputation of being a hero, and he really doesn’t want to be. I do kind of feel like he’s a Mary Sue sometimes, and I don’t really get his train of thought sometimes, but he’s not a terrible character.

Astrid is a smart ass 14 year old, I will say that. I didn’t even realize that all these kids were only 14 until hello, they explained that everyone 15 and older went *poof*. She has to take care of her autistic four year old brother Little Pete, and she does her best despite being completely out of her depth in handling him.

Quinn is a tough guy but seriously broke down when he realized that his parents disappeared. Understandable. He’s only 14 after all. He’s the weakest and most disloyal character I’ve ever seen in my life, and I do not forgive any of his betrayals or his cowardice. Worst character in this whole thing that was supposed to be a so-called friend to Sam.

Edilio is one of my favorite characters in this novel because he has a straight head on his shoulders and stays positive as much as possible. He’s Honduran, despite everyone’s racist comments about calling him Mexican and talking about crossing the border like an illegal alien or some shit. He deals with it in the best way possible, and Quinn is the worst person that teases him.

Lana is part Chumash Indian and she named her dog after Patrick from Spongebob. I guess I won’t hold that against her. We rarely see her throughout the book until Sam and Astrid and the rest of the gang end up coming across her in the desert. She’s a healer, which definitely works out when her and Patrick almost die in a car accident when her grandpa disappears in the “poof”.

Caine, Drake and Diana are from the Coates Academy and are seriously the worst kids ever. I don’t even want to talk about them. Ugh.

Every single person 15 and older mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the day. Whatever they were doing, just done. I feel bad for whatever airplanes ended up crashing in the middle of the ocean or a field or anywhere because hey, there’s no pilot. Hopefully there weren’t any kids on those planes because I doubt they would have survived.

So we have to follow a gang of 14 year olds, also the younger kids because how are they supposed to take care of themselves? Drama ensues. That’s what happens when adolescents are forced to fend for themselves.

Also these kids are freaking cruel and everything. I can’t believe they had to deal with this shit and some of them were murderous psychopaths. Kids can be super cruel is what this book taught me.

How all the grown ups disappeared was pretty great.

I thought that how Albert kept running the McDonald’s restaurant to feed the kids even though they were messy and didn’t really do much was great. He kept his cool. I was proud of him.

I loved Edilio so much. Like I said earlier, he was my favorite character, and I think that he was so underrated.

Kind of hard. I kind of didn’t like this book for the most part, but I feel like I may have liked it when I was younger. I was just really really upset with how these kids treated each other, and the racial and disability slurs. It just kind of really made me remember that when kids are desperate, they can become very cruel.

Also, Drake was truly a sociopath or something. He reveled in hurting other people. He liked to shoot people. He liked to torture people. He made Astrid call her brother a retard and put so much fear into everyone around him. He really was a scary kid, and I did not like having to read about him.

I feel like the diversity rep was just kind of added to be there? The first black girl was killed in an accident. The rest were kind of named just to be there, and they didn’t really have a point to them. The main characters that we followed were one dimensional at best, and I just didn’t seem to care about them at all. I didn’t like that, and I think I’ve talked about it in other posts so I won’t hash through it again.

I’m glad that I got to read this for Mandy, and I’m glad that this series helped her get through some of the tough parts of her childhood. Thank you for sharing this with me, and I am sorry that I couldn’t feel the magic as much as you could. However, I feel like this was a case of “it’s not the book, it’s me” because I have heard a few people say that they really enjoyed the series, and that it only gets better from here.