Book Blog #182: H2O by Virginia Bergin

Title: H2O
Author: Virginia Bergin
# of Pages: 327 (paperback)
Genre: YA, Science Fiction, Thriller
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
Synopsis: .27 IS A NUMBER RUBY HATES. It's a number that marks the percentage of the population that survived. It's a number that means she's one of the "lucky" few still standing . And it's a number that says her father is probably dead. Against all odds, Ruby has survived the catastrophic onset of the killer rain. Two weeks after the radio started broadcasting the warning "It's in the rain. It's fatal, it's contagious, and there's no cure," the drinkable water is running out. Ruby's left with two options: persevere on her own, or embark on a treacherous journey across the country to find her father--If he's even still alive.
Review: "Everyone was staring out the windows at the rain. It just looked like rain normally looks. You know, drippy."

Wow. How profound.

This book is the embodiment of "don't judge a book by it's cover". Other than reading the back cover, I basically picked it up because the cover design is fantastic. There are actually holes in the cover to illustrate the deadliness of the rain the book's plot revolves around. I didn't have my expectations very high; I was just looking for a nice, cliché, dystopian-romance, and, considering the recent trend in the YA section, I thought this book would fit the bill.

But that's not what I got.

This book is told from the POV of our protagonist Ruby, a girl who is SUPPOSEDLY 15 years old. However, her overall despicable personality exhibits traits of characteristic of a sassy 9 year old than someone who could be a freshman in high school (in the U.S., Ruby is British). Darius, one of the other characters, calls her a "clueless" bully and a "snob" (210). I couldn't agree more.  Sure, maybe the author made her this way to show growth. To show how the most terrible situations can bring people together and make people better themselves.

Well, spoiler alert, it didn't happen. She's just as annoying at the end of the book as she is in the beginning. Ruby/the author seems proud of teen stereotypes (i.e. being obsessed with her cell phone amid everyone she knows and loves dying, looting stores for makeup and giving herself a spray tan in a house that is filled with the smell of rotting corpses). It's ridiculous; I can't imagine anyone, no matter how self-absorbed they are, acting like that in an "end-of-the-world" situation.

Her obsession with her cellphone is brought up repeatedly throughout the book. But why would she need her cell phone in the first place? It was already established that cell phones don't work anymore. The author is trying way too hard to make Ruby seem like a teenager by overusing the "addicted-her-cellphone" generalization many people make about teens.

Bergin needed to talk to more fifteen year olds before she wrote this book. She can call her "utterly unique" all she wants (and as she does on her webpage) but a certain level of realism is expected. I'm disgusted by Ruby and her lack of maturity.

Cursing. Bergin must hate it because instead of including it in her book or taking it out all together, she puts in a little butterfly symbol and tells us to "add our own swear words" (16). But don't worry! Ruby curses "all the time" (16) because she's so MATURE.  No. Just no. If you want to put cursing in your book, then do it. Or if you don't, then don't (I've read plenty of books that had little to no cursing, and the lack of strong language did not affect my enjoyment of the story). But DO NOT use "something beautiful" (as Ruby calls it) to cover it up. It's as if the children's section married the young adult section, and this was their child.

A huge waste of my time. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. But if you insist on judging it yourself, do yourself a favor and check it out at the library instead of buying it like I did. It's not worth a single penny.