STRUCK by Jennifer Bosworth

Title: STRUCK
Author: Jennifer Bosworth
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (a Macmillan imprint)
Release Date: May 8, 2012
Number of Pages: 373
Source of Book: ARC from publisher at IRA Convention & NetGalley

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 is one of Macmillan’s Fierce Reads for this summer and I can see why as it is a fast-paced, suspenseful novel full of action, heart, a little bit of mystical magic, and heat. It takes place over a four day period of time in a Los Angeles that has been destroyed by an earthquake. Mia is a tortured character dealing with trying to keep her little family together and the aftereffects of the multiple lightning strikes she has suffered. She is the key cog in a wheel of good vs. bad and the people who are trying to save/destroy the world, and both sides are trying to recruit/control her. So that all sounds really big, but at its heart, this is the story of a girl just trying to figure out how to keep herself together and to choose/make her own destiny.

Jennifer Bosworth has written an engaging story that takes on issues of religion, beliefs, family loyalty, and finding one’s own path…and looks at what choices one would make to keep oneself together. She has written STRUCK in a way that keeps the action moving and the pacing made me want to keep reading and turning pages to find out what would happen next. The characters were drawn in a way that made me want to help them, and I wanted things to work out for them. She has also built a world that looks at what people would do and which direction they would turn to comfort themselves after a devastating natural disaster. In the midst of all of this, Mia meets Jeremy who she’s not quite sure about in the beginning, and who is a positive male character even if he is tortured himself. Although I did predict a few of the reveals toward the end, I still really enjoyed reading my way to them. I look forward to seeing what Jennifer Bosworth will come out with next!