If wishes were horses...

I've read a few books that loosely fall into the category of dystopian novels. I don't think it was ever really my thing and in recent years even less so. I don't read books to be depressed, I read for entertainment. After a catastrophic chemical spill a small town in Iowa is fenced off from the world and the residents put into quarantine. The company responsible for the contamination is put in charge of the town and the health of the residents, but they have their own agenda.

S.G. Redling manages to build the suspense and paranoia in this book to almost oppressive levels. Her protagonist, Ellie doesn't care about anything, but when she stumbles upon a conspiracy, she explodes in a fury of anger and violence.Overall this is a good book but (my personal opinion) the ending was not entirely satisfactory. Some authors like to leave a few loose ends in their books. I don't have a problem with that as a stylistic choice but I don't think it worked in this book. I wanted to know what happened to the residents of Flowertown. Ellie is also described as an unstable and violent personality type. It didn't quite ring true that she could hit someone over the head with a crow-bar but hesitate to pull a trigger on someone who was antagonizing her and all but telling her she was going to be set up to look like a suicide bomber. In any case, the book gets 4 stars even though it's not really my thing.

My good friend Melody who is much more at home in this genre than I read the book and this is what she thought

Book Review: Flowertown by S.G. RedlingNow this is more my kind of book.The story held my attention right to the very end, even when I knew all of the secrets that had to be revealed.The writing style was engaging and very active. I could easily picture what was happening and feel the movement of the scenarios. The characters were well developed and I always felt like there was more to learn about them (and there was). Plus, they still seemed like they had pasts and secrets that weren't revealed in the story.It was a nice length, not short enough to be read in a day and not long enough to be a mission of a book.I highly recommend this book for people who love sarcastic characters and a more believable (but still definitely fictional) storyline.Not for those who care about swearing though.