[Review] Pure by Julianna Baggott

Goodreads Summary: We know you are here, our brothers and sisters...

Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers . . . to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small. Pressia is on the run.

Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash . . .
There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge, whose father is one of the most influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely. Different. He thinks about loss-maybe just because his family is broken; his father is emotionally distant; his brother killed himself; and his mother never made it inside their shelter. Or maybe it's his claustrophobia: his feeling that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. So when a slipped phrase suggests his mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her.

When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

Goodreads Amazon Book Depository  Barnes and Nobles

**SPOILERS PRESENT**

When I first started reading this book, it caught my interest, but not enough to keep me awake. I usually read an hour then went an did something else. Halfway through the book, however this book got much more interesting. All the generalities of people meeting each other had been done and I started to really like this book. The characters themselves were really interesting, and the there was not much romance. In fact, there was almost no romance, except near the end where everybody was happy to still be alive and Pressia and Bradwell kiss. The plot had a lot of twists in it that I didn't expect, such as Patridge's mother being not fused, but having prosthetic and metal limbs. Also, until they fully explained it in the book, I didn't realize that Pressia and Patridge were half-siblings. It's just something that didn't occur to me, but was very interesting. So all in all, I enjoyed this book a lot. I'm not saying that this book didn't have flaws though. The fact that people can be "fused" to the ground, to other living creatures/people, or to objects and still live takes some time to get used to (Pressia's hand is fused to a doll's head, Bradwell has birds fused to his back, and El Capitan's younger brother is fused to his younger brother). Also, like I mentioned earlier, this book started really slowly and somewhat bored me for the first 150ish pages. I would give this book 4 out of 5 stars- the ending and the lack of love triangles made it really awesome (I don't really like love triangles...)