Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman

Living in Southern California my entire life, I get earthquakes, fire and drought. I made it through the Northridge earthquake, I was recently evacuated because of the Woolsey fire, and my grass is a parched brown in the summer. I conserve water, as a good citizen should, but have never given a second thought to the thought of the tap running dry. Until Now.

Dry, while somewhat dystopian, explores what would happen if the tap went dry, called the Tap-Out. Taking place in a quiet suburban Orange County neighborhood, Dry is told through the voice of alternating characters, but primarily Alyssa. Alyssa, lives with her parents and 10 year-old brother Garrett. The government, warning that water supplies are extremely low, has turned off all water. Her parents seem unconcerned, feeling the crisis will end soon. Slow to react, by the time they go to Costco to get water, all supplies are gone, and the atmosphere has become every-man-for-himself. With supplies running low, her parents go to get water from a desalinization facility set up on the beach. They never come back. Left to their own resources, Alyssa and her brother turn to their survivalist neighbors, the McCrackens. Kelton McCracken is your Boy Scout geek that always has an answer. Kelton's one weakness is Alyssa, having had a long crush on her. Kelton warns Alyssa that society will break down very soon. Against his better judgement, Alyssa convinces Kelton to go with her to look for her parents. As society quickly disintegrates, and not finding her parents, Alyssa and Kelton return to find their neighborhood a war zone. Now it is all about survival.

As Alyssa, Kelton and Garrett struggle to survive, they meet some nefarious characters along the way; Jacqui, a fiercely independent squatter, living in unoccupied vacation homes, and Henry, a slimy conniving self-serving huckster. The story unfolds through their four voices (Garrett only gets one little chapter). Occasionally the story is interspersed with informational "snapshots"  that add to the understanding of the situation and what is going on.

Dry hits very close to home. In fact, I was reading it as the hills behind my house were burning and we were evacuated. Seeing the way first responders mobilized, and the way the community responded, made the premise more difficult for me to accept. Shusterman, and his son, Jarrod, do an excellent job of setting the ground work, building the characters, and creating an exciting story arc. While not my favorite Shusterman stand-alone novel (that would be Bruiser), it is very good.
Mark's Book Picks Score: 3.5

Reading Level: 7.0 • Interest Level: 7-12 • AR Points: NA • Lexile: NA  
Publisher: Simon & Shuster • 390 Pages • Copyright: 2018 • ISBN: 978-1-481-48196-0 • Available in Perma-Bound binding.