Empty

I must confess: I am a bit obsessed with dystopian and post-apocalyptic YA fiction. For me, as with most people, it probably started with [b:The Hunger Games 2767052 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) Suzanne Collins https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1586722975l/2767052.SX50.jpg 2792775], and grew from there. Soon after reading [b:The Hunger Games 2767052 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) Suzanne Collins https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1586722975l/2767052.SX50.jpg 2792775], I found Carrie Ryan's haunting, claustrophobic [b:The Forest of Hands and Teeth 3432478 The Forest of Hands and Teeth (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, #1) Carrie Ryan https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320633297l/3432478.SY75.jpg 3473471], and I was hooked. Though those two series are very different, they share a kind of raw desperation that I found beautiful, and I've been searching for more of it ever since.I started “Empty” with high hopes. The cover is well-done, and the premise sounded timely in a compelling way. I think we're all aware that our connected modern lives are powered by a non-renewable resource, and I was excited to find a YA book addressing what might happen once that resource starts running out.Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I tried to like the book, but its flaws were numerous and glaring enough to keep me from getting absorbed in the story. The writing seems stilted and amateurish, and the characters frequently spout awkward, paragraph-long info-dumps. So many anvils are dropped that I'm surprised I finished the book without a concussion. I love books in which the message is a organic part of the story; in “Empty” the message has been shoe-horned in as frequently and loudly as possible.Then there were the characters, all too often flat and cliché. The worst offender was the stereotypical cheerleader, whose “character growth” moment was deciding it was okay to wear glasses instead of contacts. (Not even because she had come to understand that appearance didn't matter much in a world gripped by crisis—more because she realized she still looked pretty in glasses.) A few of the second-tier characters had the potential to be interesting, but they got sadly little attention.To my total lack of surprise, the ending was incongruous, bordering on deus ex machina. The main female character finds a random abandoned house in the woods, complete with garden and self-sustaining energy source. Hallelujah, we're saved!I still think the premise of the book is good, but the execution leaves much to be desired. My advice: read Paolo Bacigalupi's excellent [b:Ship Breaker 7095831 Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker, #1) Paolo Bacigalupi https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327874074l/7095831.SY75.jpg 7352929] instead.