Unwind Book Review by Connor Guarnieri

       Unwind is a dystopian fiction book, YA.  In this society, there is a new law that is passed directly after the Heartland wars, which are many battles fought over the debate over abortion, with the pro-life against the pro-choice. This was a long and bloody conflict that only ended when a new idea was brought forth. This idea stated that a child must not be harmed up until the age of 12, but after that age the parents can choose to "Unwind" the child. A crude explanation of this is disassembling the child into parts, to sell to people in need of them. They become involuntary donors. This unwinding process must not kill the child, but keep him/her in a divided state, and they must use every single part, not one can be wasted. This idea ended the war, but started a new one. Teenagers were being targeted, marked, and just one tiny mistake could mean you are gone to a harvest camp. The main characters, Connor, Risa, and Lev, all have been marked for unwinding. Connor, a troubled teen, gets in fights, and has bad grades. Risa, is a ward of the state, she is sent away due to budget cuts. Lev, a tithe, is being unwound willingly for religious purposes. When all three of their paths cross, they must team up to escape the ever looming threat of the Juvie-cops, citizens and even themselves. Will they be able to survive, or will they go into the divided state? Read the book to find out.

        When I first read this book in sixth grade, it was out of morbid curiosity.  The fact that kids would get taken away and unwound was to me a really cool book idea. I never really new about the implications that flew over my head at the time. I never realized that this connected with a deeper meaning in todays society, especially now. This book already meant a lot to me, and now that I can connect with it in the present is really cool. The author, Neal Shusterman is one of my favorites. He wrote Scythe, which is another morbid story. He also wrote Dry, and Challenger Deep, and a whole bunch more books. He is such a good writer in the sense that the characters connect with the readers. Other than sharing the first name, there is so much you can connect with. Their struggles, which at a glance looks way different compared to ours normally, is rooted in every teens daily life. It is very interesting to see how this completely different society deals with modern day problems. How they deal with life, economy, environmental problems is really cool to me. Everything that happens in this book might look crazy and unlikely, he connects it so well with human emotions and thought process, really fleshing out his characters to seem more like actual humans than words on a page. 

    I think everyone should read this book, as I loved it so much, and all the sequels too. I really love all these books, as you can probably tell. Go read it now.