a review by Jade Hounsell
Sadie Walker is stranded is set a few months after Allison Hewitt, Seattle has become a walled in city in which survivors try to semblance as much of a ‘normal’ life as possible back together. Unfortunately food rations are not always enough to feed families and the city ‘is rife with crime, religious cults and black-market dealings.’
The city is divided into two main parties, the ‘Repopulationists’ (or more commonly known as Rabbits) who believe that the main goal should be to repopulate the city and then there is everyone else. The people who are currently running the city have made a stand on where they feel their priorities lie at this point in time, stating that these babies the Rabbits are making will be a major drain on the city’s resources. The Rabbits in turn are threatening to leave and if they do, they will be taking a workforce that is very desperately needed by the city.
Sadie is one of the ‘everyone else’ just worried about having to feed, clothe and protect her young nephew, Shane, her boyfriend, Carl, and herself.
Then Shane is kidnapped, Carl is killed, Sadie is knocked unconscious and part of the wall is destroyed by the Rabbits leaving it open to attack by a swarm of zombies. Upon waking up Sadie has no option but to flee the city, even though her first instinct is to find Shane. As it happens when making her way to the docks with her neighbour Andrea, Sadie spies the kidnappers and races off to successfully rescue him before making her escape on Andrea’s uncle’s boat with 4 others.
Without giving too much more of the story away, I will say that after a series of events they end up stuck on an island, thus the title Stranded.
When I got the two of these books, Trapped and Stranded, I honestly had no idea what to expect. Well actually, that is a lie; I was expecting two very bad zombie novels in all truth. Upon reading Trapped I was very surprised at how good it was and how sucked into the story I was. When I looked at Stranded, I actually thought that this one would be roughly the same story line but with a different lead and maybe a bit of a different viewpoint, again I was very pleasantly surprised. Madeleine has done a wonderful job of these books, leaving me hoping that there are more to come in the series, and I would highly recommend them to anyone, even if zombie books are not their usual staple.
