Resistant definitely gave me some strong Divergent vibes. So, of course, I LOVED it. The story felt even more realistic due to our current pandemic. The twists and turns were unexpected and great! I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good sci fi or dystopian YA novel.

I really enjoyed this book! This was a great YA dystopian! The story incorporates four main characters and I was impressed that the author managed to make their voices unique enough for them not to blend together. I have noticed the latter happen in a lot of books that include so many perspectives. Each of the characters are memorable, relatable, and enjoyable to read from their perspective. I thought the story had great twists and the pacing was great and kept my attention throughout. I'm really hoping that Erika comes out with another book in the series as the ending definitely left it open for the possibility of a continuation!

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this book.

This was better than I was expecting! Some good plot twists that, while not completely unexcepted, kept it interesting. Some heavier topics hinted at, and while it is not graphic and is completely behind the scenes, there is rape involved. I don't usually like switching POV's but it worked in this. I really hope there is a sequel because I want to know what happens next!

Resistant was everything I've come to expect and love in a YA post apocalyptic / dystopian novel. We have a 'Community' of chosen ( read wealthy enough to buy a place) healthy individuals who are living a relatively normal life free from the deadly virus that wiped out thousands. On the outside of their walls are the survivors, people who survived the virus but couldn't get a place in the community. Inside we have Cat, the head honcho's daughter, who spends every day with a team of other scientists trying to work out a cure but discovers some secrets that show her things might not be what they seem in her protected community. Outside we have Wren, a fiercely independant and curious young girl who is desperate to find her Mother who has been kidnapped and possibly taken to the Community. So yep.... not one chosen one but TWO! Double the fun!
This was such an easy, enjoyable read. There was the usual angsty teenage relationships, both girls were hot and didn't know it, their best friends were boys who secretly loved them..... so basically.... all the cheese! But I didn't care. I loved it!! I loved the characters, I loved the plot, I loved the twists, I loved the relationships, I loved the ravaged world setting, I loved the danger... Have I mentioned that I loved it? It was exactly what I needed and wanted. Erika, if you're reading this, please can we have another one? Soon? Pretty please?

I was hesitant to request this book simply because of the world we are living in right now, and the very close issues this book deals with. However, I extremely enjoyed it!

The world was different. Firstly, The Community, is a safe haven inside a dome where the residents are protected from the outside. The outside of the dome is, quite frankly, a scary place to be.

The characters drew me in straight away: Cat, Abel, Wren and Ryder. Characters that should not be able to contact each other, but have found a way. However, they don’t realise the commotion they have caused, and they soon realise that the rules of the camp are there for a reason, and the consequences are more severe than they thought.

This was such a good read, and I hope for a sequel. If you enjoyed The Hunger Games, then you will love this one.

A massive thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy to review!

An interesting take on a pandemic style issue that definitely resonated this year.
Excitingly paced, with some good characterisation.

Thank you so much for allowing me to read and review your titles.
I do appreciate it and continue to review books that I get the chance to read.
Thanks again!

If you’re craving the world of young adult dystopias, then Resistant will sweep you into a ravaged near future where a pandemic virus has wiped out much of humanity and four resilient idealistic teens have to rise up in order to set things right.

Two teens, Cat and Abel, have grown up in the walled, domed, quarantined, and heavily guarded enclave of The Community. They spend their days focused on school and research to discover a working cure. Cat’s beloved Mom is slowly dying from some vague illness, not the virus, that’s sweeping through the community with deadly aftermath. Cat’s father is the formidable, intimidating, cold founding Scientist leading both The Community and its scientific efforts. Abel is a refugee orphan taken in at The Community’s founding, and on to something being terribly wrong in The Community. He’s searching for a possible way to escape and wants to enlist his best friend Cat alongside him.

Meanwhile, in a forest “camp” comprised of long abandoned homes on the outside, a group of healthy survivors fend for a precarious survival. Part of this depends on secretly picking up key items such as fuel delivered at a bridge pick-up adjacent to The Community. Wren, a rebellious teen is the daughter of the leader of the outcasts, a doctor who keeps her own closely held secrets. Ryder, an orphan, adores her and holds out the allure of trips outside the camp on his motorcycle. In a bridge pick-up of supplies, things turn dangerous, shots get fired, and Wren barely escapes with her life.

What follows is adventure, life-threatening dangers, teaming up to overcome seemingly unsurmountable hurdles, and a quest for the truth. True to the best of dystopian tales, teens not fully indoctrinated into their society’s ideology become painfully aware of the deep fault lines in their parents’ generation decisions. They get thrust into heroism as they spring into action to actualize a better future. What follows involves overcoming self-doubt, working towards ever increasing clarity as to what’s going on, finding their own moral centers, defending against danger from all sides, and rooting out of tyranny.

Best of all, Book 2 is coming!

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

It has been said that the current pandemic may be a dress rehearsal. Something much worse could occur on the near future. In this novel, this much worse has arrived, and life as we have l own before has caesed to exist. In decaying suburbia feral groups of humans struggle to survive. In a sealed domed city the new agie had been vanquished - yet hasn't been. People are still dying.

So for those who wonder if things will ever be back to normal, this world is an extrapolation of how a Virus-free world will seem like a golden age, forever lost.

Against this background four young people tell their side of what it means to to be living in this new dystopia. First Cat, the daughter of a doctor whose motives. appear forever more murky, and Abel, the suitor who is sent to his certain death in helping to defend the Dome from Outside. Outside the Dome, there is Wren and her boy, Rider, negotiating goods from the Dome to keep her community alive, until her appearance changes this balance for good. What is the doctor's kee. I retest in Wren about?

The writer is skilled in maintaining suspense as various mysteries deepen within this damaged and dysfunctional world. It is perceived from a deeply subjective lens from the eyes of all four teens: the illness remains mysterious and nebulous, but the real question remains on what secrets and hidden misuses of power have been kept from these children, and how these might define the fate of all of them in the future.

The ending brings an interesting enough revelation, this is a small world in the end. A post-pandemic scenario may well mean that the flow of information will narrow, creating the return to the more primitive and feudalistic world depicted here.

3.5/5 stars
Recommended for people who like: dystopia, multiple POVs, mystery, viral apocalypse

This review has bene posted to GoodReads and will be posted to my blog on 4/21.
TW rape, kidnapping

This book was a bit of a mixed bag. I really liked the beginning, but then it got dark in a way I don't think was necessary and also added in some new POVs halfway through. It was also extremely predictable and written in an early-YA style, which I'm not sure I like.

To begin, I think the concept was an interesting one, even if the 'inside community' vs. 'outside ravaged wasteland' is fairly commonplace. I liked Cat more than Wren in the beginning, but both of them offered up interesting POVs and had their own, albeit similar, mysteries. I liked that the mystery of the virus--sorry, Virus...why doesn't this thing have a name?--was carried through the entire book rather than dropped in favor of the personal mysteries the characters dealt with.

However, as mentioned, the book reads like an early-YA novel (and not The Hunger Games type of early either). For one, both Cat and Wren have a boy from their community, Abel and Ryder, respectively, who is madly in love with them and who they're madly in love with as well. Abel makes sense, but I never really got on to liking Ryder, who kind of falls into the stereotypical hotshot asshole (though at least he's never an ass to Wren). Both Cat and Wren have fairly immature voices, though Cat's is a little better than Wren's. Their voices are also pretty similar as well and there were times, even at the very end of the book, where I wasn't sure whose perspective I was reading in. Also, about 1/3 of the way through the book, Modrak introduces Ryder's and Abel's POVs, first by going back in the narrative timeline a bit, then going forward. I did like the addition of their perspectives to the story, but I think it should've been done from the very beginning and that the narrative timeline should not have backtracked in order for their POVs to be included.

As for the characters...why are both the main girls named after animals? Wren and Cat, really?!

I digress, Cat, properly Catherine, was the first POV in the book and she introduces us to a world inside the Community/Dome, which is focused on looking forward and finding a cure to the Virus that wiped most of the world out. Cat reads younger than she actually is. She's definitely written as an older teen, but her voice just does not convey that, particularly at the beginning, though she does get better as the book goes on. She's also just straight up willfully naive, choosing the Community and her self-admitted terrifying father over the potential uncertainty of being free...as if her father wouldn't do terrible things just because she's his daughter. That being said, I liked how Cat evolved during the book and became someone who subtly fought back and investigated what was going on behind the scenes of the Community. She clearly has a big heart and is actually pretty good with other people, be it calming them down and being kind or manipulating them to helping her out.

Wren comes next and also comes across as super immature at first, though like Cat her voice gets stronger and older as the book goes on. More so than Cat, Wren seems like someone who was naive about the world and preferred to look at the sunny side of things...though that switches around fairly quickly. Props to her, Wren takes action almost immediately and isn't afraid of sticking up for herself or others. Wren definitely gets the short end of the stick in this book and a lot of it just feels icky. SPOILER, SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH: Wren gets kidnapped and is raped multiple times, though these scenes are not described it is very obvious what has happened. Also, while Wren exhibits trauma from this while in the situation, it's kind of brushed over afterward.

Abel comes across as pretty pushy at first, pressuring Cat to leave the Community even though her mother is dying, but he relaxes about it a lot and it's clear he just wants what's best for Cat and for her to be safe from her psycho father. He's a fairly pacifist character and, like Cat, cares for and wants to help other people. He's definitely more open to the sinister nature of the Community, though he also doesn't quite grasp the depth of what's going on until much later in the book. Interestingly, despite Abel's fire in the beginning of the book, I feel he then later on comes off as almost too passive later on, though admittedly he can hold his own against Ryder.

As for Ryder, he also comes off as pushy in the beginning of the book but clearly cares for Wren. He's about the polar opposite of Abel in that he's far more of a hotshot and tends to be more aggressive. I'm not sure how much I like Ryder's character. When I'm reading his POV I think he's fine, just like how I like him if I'm reading him from Wren's POV, but if I see him from anyone else's viewpoint I don't like him as much. He's impulsive, led by his emotions, doesn't seem to care much for others aside from Wren and maybe Claire, and is very conflict-oriented. It's just not a good look on a character. However, I do appreciate how the difference between his and Wren's POVs vs Abel and Cat's POVs allow you to see narrative bias.

In terms of other characters, Dr. Grayson, Cat's father and the leader of the Community/Dome, is an absolute psychopath. He's kind of predictable in some ways, but not nearly as much as the plot is. I do genuinely wonder how anyone could ever like him enough to create kids (or simply to work with him) is beyond me. Claire, who is Wren's mother, obviously loves her daughter very much...but I also don't think she's winning any parent of the year awards. She's not a psychopath, at least, but she does hide a lot from the people around her even when they have a right to know the things she's hiding. Sienne, Cat's mother, actually might win that parent the year award, particularly if she's only competing against the other two parents. That being said, she's only in the book for a small period of time but seems like a decent enough person. Alice, a friend of Wren's, is... also a psychopath and I feel is going to continue to be a major problem. Bob, Claire's boyfriend, is 'eh.' I can't really get a good feel for him since his character seems to vacillate wildly between different things. Don is also 'eh.' He does the right thing when it comes down to it and he's consistently good to Cat and her mom throughout the book. However, I wouldn't say he was a good guy either.

Overall, I liked a lot of aspects of the book but there were some things that annoyed me, such as the immature voices from Cat and Wren, and there were a couple of major things that I straight up did not like, so 3.5 stars seems appropriate. I have some additional opinions that are fairly spoilery, some having to do with the TW, so I put them below this in case anyone wants to read them as well.

MAJOR CHARACTER SPOILERS

Non-TW Spoiler:
The plot and revelations were pretty obvious in this book. I was writing notes while I wrote and I have a note from ~25% in where I ask 'are Wren and Cat sisters?' Then further in I settled on them being twins or clones, which turned out to be true.

TW Spoilers:
Aside from the predictability, though, I had some major issues with Wren's plot. I don't think the rape was necessary to the book at all, nor is her being pregnant from said rape. Based on the technology available outside the Community/Dome and on Dr. Grayson's desire to have her keep the kid even if she were to be inside, I feel like she's going to be forced to continue the pregnancy, which just doesn't sit right with me. I get what Modrak is doing here with the 'next generation is immune' type of shit, but couldn't she have had sex with Ryder? Beta by Rachel Cohn was published in 2012 and pulls some very similar shit w/ the MC being raped, then becoming pregnant as a result, and then not being allowed to abort despite explicitly wanting to b/c the baby is 'too special' or some shit, and I just...I don't know if that's the same route Modrak is going with this, but I worry it is. I also worry it's going to be put in a way where carrying the baby to term is 'for the good of humanity' and Wren agrees to do it b/c she'd feel guilty otherwise, which, spoiler is still fucking coercive and is an unwanted pregnancy.

I'm particularly inclined to feel this is the route Modrak is going because the epilogue involves a character going absolutely apeshit because she feels guilty for using embryonic stem cells (and also incorrect science, but whatever). This character goes on and on abt the loss of life and how she murdered two 'perfect' embryos...which at that stage of development aren't even embryos but zygotes, (for reference, monozygotic twins split sometime 2-6 days after the ovum is fertilized, and the researcher was using embryos/zygotes that had, in her words just split). At this stage in development, zygotes and embryos can and do still self-abort. Also, if you're using embryonic stem cells in research, the embryos/zygotes are already not going to turn into babies. Like, their fate has already been decided. Chill.

Many thanks to Erika Modrak and Black Rose Writing for an advanced readers copy of this book.

I always find myself pleasantly surprised by the books I receive from Black Rose and this one was no exception. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

After a slower start, you are very quickly grabbed by not only the storyline but the well developed and liable characters. It was definitely hard to put this one down! So prepare to lose an hour or two of sleep. Erika wasn't an author who was on my radar before now but she is definitely one i will start following. Her skill with storytelling and quirky humour is definitely something i clicked really well with.

Geared to a YA audience, but without the usual troupes.

A community cut off from the world tries to avoid the plague killing all mankind. The quarantine breaks down and the impacts are felt both inside and outside the community.

If you've been following me, you've noticed that I've been reading a lot of lighter material lately to escape from reality and the ugliness of this world. So, what part of my brain thought it was a good idea to request this book, clearly very close to our current reality, on Netgalley? Good question! I assume it's the science nerd in me, quite curious to see what the author would do with an issue like this and where this story would go.

At first this story seems a little slow. We're introduced to the main characters in this story and through very lengthy chapters we're also introduced to this world. We get a clear impression of the protected people living inside the dome and we also get a very clear view of the world outside the safe walls surrounding the town. And most of it is quite ugly, to be honest. If this is the future of our world, I'm not that excited anymore to be there for it to happen.

However, once we are familiar with everyone and everything and once characters from different worlds start to meet each other, each holding a pieces of the puzzle, it gets more and more interesting. The last quarter of the book was an exciting sequence of release after release and interesting discovery after interesting discovery. Once all the pieces of the puzzle clicked an exciting, intriguing and also slightly scary scenario unfolded. And now I really long for more!

I also long for more because of these characters. Due to the heavy circumstances we really got to know all of these people quite well. And not all of it was pretty. And not all of it was kind. They made hard choices, they made violent choices, they made painful choices. And yet, yet it was hard to blame them for it. Especially because their emotions were described quite vividly and therefore we could understand quite well WHY they did what they did.

I hope there will be a sequel, because this story totally deserves one.

Solid sci-fi somewhat relevant to the times we live-in. It has all the elements of a good story -- well written characters, engaging plot, good writing, surprises, etc. This will probably appeal to a lot of sci-fi fans, not just YA. Recommended.

I really appreciate the review copy!!

As a result of my various committee appointments and commitments I am unable to disclose my personal thoughts on this title at this time. Please see my star rating for a general overview of how I felt about this title. Additionally, you may check my GoodReads for additional information on what thoughts I’m able to share publicly. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this and any other titles you are in charge of.

Loved the story, the pace and the twists of this novel! Feels especially relevant in our Covid-19 world too.
Cat and Wren. Two headstrong girls both yearning for more and prepared to run headlong into the action with little thought or planning. Mysterious adults with secrets about the past. Perfect YA material so far!
If you are a fan of Divergent and Unwind you will enjoy this very much.
Thank you Netgalley for the ARC, this is my honest review.

The story starts with The Community, created to protect healthy people from the virus. Caused by antibiotic resistance, the virus is an incurable infections. Cat, while taking care of her ailing mother, is part of a group of people expected to find the miracle cure.

Everything changes when her best friend, Abel, shows her that things might not be what they seem. There are survivors.

Then we get to see Wren, a survivor outside of the walls. A small group of survivors just trying to make it everyday.

Everything changes when her mother is taken.

I immediately became entranced in this book, I could hardly put it down.

*This eARC was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.