Review: Carter, A. (2018). Not if I save you first.

LSSL 5385: Best Fiction for Young Adults

Carter, A. (2018). Not if I save you first. New York, NY: Scholastic Press.

From the YALSA’s “Best Fiction for Young Adults” list and the current TLA Texas Lonestar list, Ally Carter’s new novel portrays a teen girl who is simultaneously concerned with regular teenage preoccupations and living outside of them; interested in beauty tips, but also intelligent and highly capable of taking care of herself and her own physically laborious needs. Maddie is a child in the beginning of the story when her father is in charge of the US President’s personal safety, and her best friend in the world is Logan, the president’s son. However, soon after a failed abduction-gone-bad attempt, the third-person narrative jumps ahead six years to find now-teenage Maddie and her father living off the grid in Alaska, though even she is not sure why.

She has lived virtually alone for years, homeschooled via correspondence, with no communication with the outside world other than the one-way letters she eventually stopped sending to Logan. Grieving his abandonment of their close friendship, she has gotten on with her isolated life by learning how to survive in the harsh Alaskan landscape, where any number of thing--including possibly poisonous groundwater--can kill a person. Her simple existence is then turned upside down when a frustrated president and first lady decide to send a now defiant sixteen year-old Logan to stay, in hopes of keeping him out of trouble. Before Maddie can even address her feelings of resentment and loneliness at seeing him again, her father flies away to deal with an oncoming storm, and Maddie and Logan find themselves under attack by foreign invaders.

Maddie makes several smart choices in pursuing the retrieval of the boy she is indignant toward, not the least of which is using others’ perception of inept and harmless teen girls to her own advantage. Along the way she must contend with not only serious injuries, but a dangerous environment coupled with violent and ruthless individuals set on escaping with her former childhood friend. This novel aptly pulls together elements of teen romance with humorous dialogue, perilous action and adventure, and a realistic and brutal wilderness setting. It ends with a twist, and not the first reminder that people, emotions, and motivations are complex, not as simplistic and one-dimensional as we may sometimes like to paint them.