ANY SIGN OF LIFE

ANY SIGN OF LIFE by Rae Carson

After going through the 2020 pandemic, Any Sign of Life by Rae Carson looks like a good read, but it's not without some concerning problems.

Paige Miller wakes up post-COVID one morning to find herself attached to a chain of IVs at home and her whole family dead. In fact, not only is her whole family dead, but what appears to be her whole town and possibly the whole world. It doesn't take long for Rae to figure out that people were infected with some type of sickness that wiped out almost the entire planet in a few days' time. So why would an entire planet be wiped out? Because we are dealing with...drum roll here...aliens. Through her journey of trying to find supplies and shelter, she does discover a small number of people who survived due to an injection they received. What follows is the story of the struggle to survive and to regain control of the world.

HEADS UP - There is a lengthy Heads Up section!

- Quite a bit of language including 6-8 F-bombs

- The first theory for the disappearance is Fox News reporting that a Texas minister says the deaths are God's judgement for homosexuality.

- Cops vs. Blacks

- Teenage drinking

- Teenage sex talk including sexual preferences

- Rae's biological father who she only refers to as the Sperm Donor made them attend church every Sunday but didn't live it throughout the week

-When people were chosen for the injection they prioritized Indigenous people

-Trump reference by saying the president didn't know about the random people chosen for the injection because he messed up the handling of the pandemic.

- Racism even among the few remaining people

- Life motto of the book is "Life is just a series of battles fought "

- Two teens develop a relationship and grab a handful of condoms for future possibilities

By the time I was done reading this book I felt like we had covered every political topic except the wall and global warming. There are certainly times where it feels like there is less of a story and more of an author's agenda. So after everything, for the Killiany house, this book will not have a place on our bookshelf.