Lighthouse Island

Imagine a world in the future. A world that has become so densely populated that green spaces no longer exist. They are now the product of advertisements to work towards using the credits you earn in hopes of visiting a place that only exists far from where you live now. Cities have developed so much due to the over population of people that any space is used to build on. Animals have all died out due to disease or simply being hunted to extinction. Now only the wealthy and rich have a handful of animals. Water is the most precious of commodities. All the rivers have dried up because global warming and creation of cities have left the atmosphere and the ecosystem completely out of balance. It no longer rains. Since water is so precious, every single human has been allocated just one quart a day and most of the time, it's cloudy and yellow but still drinkable.

There are no longer a need for maps, data or numbers so calendars are now rendered obsolete. No one cares what year it is because the days have all begun to blur together as one anyways. The only technology that remains in virtually every location imaginable are televisions. They are the way in which communication between the agencies and the population exist. Depending on your skill set you might be able to climb your way up the corporate ladder and be able to move where water rationing isn't a concern and food is more readily available. Every night on the radio from an abandoned satellite a voice reads over and over the great classical books of the world. It is known simply as Big Radio.

The only hope that Nadia Stepan has growing up as an orphan is finding a way to escape to a place known simply as Lighthouse Island. A place where trees, oceans, and food is plentiful. It is only gifted to those that can afford it, but Nadia believes she can find a way to get there on her own. Not knowing how she will make the journey, she finds all her knowledge in the forms of books that most people have disregarded in leiu of television. She consumes them instead of watching the government run programming, mostly in part by her inability to see due to defect in her vision caused from a lack of Vitamin A. Now all she can do is simply read about places that used to exist. History books and technology books have been rendered obsolete since it doesn't matter what the current state of things are now. Resources can't be replicated to fix the things that were once used like ebooks and cell phones. Now most people resort to scavenging, work in the agencies or demolition. Now that water is so hard to come by and the pipes no longer have the pressure or electricity to run them, buildings larger than 4 stories are demolished. The people that live there are forced to find suitable housing some place else or are turned over to the prisons to work in labor camps.

I received Lighthouse Island by Paulette Jiles compliments of William Morrow, a division of Harper Collins Publishers for my honest review and received no monetary compensation for a favorable one. I love books like this one because it takes us into the possibility of where our own future may in fact be headed. If population increases so exponentially will the earth be able to substain itself or will the possibilities like what are featured in this book become a reality? I thoroughly enjoyed this one and can't wait to read more novel from Paulette Jiles. This was a first for me. She literally took me into a future world where I was living alongside Nadia and one I which I truly felt was real. I could relate to Nadia character being a huge book lover myself. It was such an incredible journey and one I couldn't put down until I finished the last page. I rate this one a 4.5 out of 5 stars and this book is now available for preorder since it is due out in October of this year. This is one you won't want to miss! This was so much better than what I was expecting and hope to see this one come to the big screen someday soon!

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Lighthouse Island by Paulette Jiles

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• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (October 8, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062232509
• ISBN-13: 978-0062232502
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches