Struck by Jennifer Bosworth
Series: Struck #1
Source: Bought
Release Date: April 26, 2012
Mia Price is a lightning addict. She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.
Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.
Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.
Struck revolves around a young girl, Mia, who is a lightning addict. After a devastating earthquake tears through Los Angeles, thousands are have died and others are left homeless and starving. The book did make an interesting point about how the government was too busy saving the world to save their own citizens. Two warring cults, The Followers and the Seekers, compete for control over the city. The Followers are lead by The Prophet, a psychotic man who believed God was speaking directly to him that Judgment Day is approaching. The Seekers, while Mia spends more time with them, less is known about them.
Overall, this novel was very cliche and the writing was cheesy at times. I didn’t really feel the chemistry between Mia and Jeremy and it felt forced at times. Mia was frustrating throughout the novel as well. Personally, if I thought someone was standing next to me with a knife, my first thought would not be “Oh I must be dreaming,” and go back to bed. Nope, my eyes would immediately fly open, I would wake in a panic, check all the windows and doors in my house, and then try (unsuccessfully) to go back to bed. She was also naive at times. She thought her mother should be in a psych ward with 24/7 supervision, but in the aftermath of emergencies, I find this highly unlikely. Yes, many will probably suffer from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, but they will not have the means to receive the help needed. She didn’t seem to know what she wanted at times. She would ask to be saved, but then when she is she was cranky and sarcastic about it.
The book did have some surprisingly good action sequences. The last bit of the novel was pretty much all action, but didn’t end abruptly, which I find a lot of books do.
