Paradise Girl
by Phill Featherstone
Published: January
17, 2017
Publisher: Troubador
Publishing
Genre: Dystopian,
Post-Apocalyptic, Young Adult
Blurb:
A highly infectious and incurable virus spreads worldwide.
Seventeen-year-old Kerryl Shaw and her family live on a remote farm and think
they will be safe, but the plague advances. Despite deaths around them, the
Shaws survive. However, this changes when a stranger arrives, and it soon
becomes apparent he has brought the infection to their door. One by one the
family succumbs, leaving Kerryl alone.
Kerryl is sure it’s only a matter of time before she, too,
dies. She decides to record what she thinks will be her final days in a diary.
She realises that it will never be read, so she imagines a reader and calls him
Adam. As loneliness and isolation affect the balance of her mind, Adam ceases
to be an imaginary character and becomes real to her.
Communications break down and services fail. Unexplained
events build fear and menace: Kerryl hears her name called in the night; she’s
attacked by stray animals; she’s molested when she visits the town; she sees a
stranger outside her house, who vanishes when she tries to make contact;
objects appear and disappear. The climax comes when she finds a text message on
her phone. Who is texting her? How? She thinks it can only be Adam, because by
now there is no one else left. Another text invites her to a rendezvous at the
Bride Stones, a beauty spot popular with lovers, and she leaves for what she is
sure will be a meeting with Adam...
“This is such an engrossing read I found it impossible to
put down...This is writing of a high literary standard, with the kind of psychological
depth which lingers in the mind long after reading.”
– Sarah Vincent, critic and author of The Testament of Vida
Tremayne.
My Review:
A deadly virus has been unleashed upon the world it was
first seen in Africa and slowly made its way to Kerryl Shaw’s home in Europe. Kerryl
lives on a farm where the nearest town is many miles away as well as the next
farm. Kerryl lives on the farm with her Mam, Gran, Granddad and her twin
brother Lander.
The Shaw’s all assume that they were perfectly safe from the
virus with them living so far away from anyone. Until the day that Kerryl lets
the virus in. A man shows up on the farm one day with his little boy who is
sick and seems to have the virus and asking for help. Kerryl can’t turn them
away as he is just a little boy even though she knows that she will be going
against everything that her family has told her. She makes the little boy a
place to stay in the barn but when she returns from telling her family what she
has done the father is nowhere to be seen.
One by one her family takes ill and it is not long before
Kerryl is left all alone to fend for herself. However her brother Lander does
not stick around long enough for any to witness if he ever had the virus as he
left in the middle of the night without telling anyone.
When Kerryl finds herself all alone she decides to write a
dairy for whoever found it and wanted to read it. She wanted to let the world
know of her life before the virus and now so she kept two dairies. She lets us
know how the virus started and where it originated when it reached her part of
the world. She told of her life before, during and after the virus came into
her life.
Paradise Girl swept me off my feet from the get go and never
let up until the very end. Oh and that ending really took me by surprise I
never once saw it coming. Paradise Girl is so emotional and will hit you right
in the old ticker and will probably cause more than a few tears. Paradise Girl
is one of those books that you don’t want to put down that will keep you
turning the pages wanting to know what is going to happen next.
Paradise Girl is superbly written and will leave the reader
wanting more. If you like a book that will leave you feeling sad and warm
inside all at the same time then this is the book for you.
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