"Unwind" by Neal Shusterman

Far in the future, we have finally settled the argument between the pro-life and the pro-choice, after a war that could've been the end of our country. The solution: Unwinding.

This is a process that our government came up with at the last minute. There are no more abortions. You must have the child, and either Stork it (placing it on a random stranger's doorstep, after which the child is legally theirs) or raise it until the child is thirteen, and then you have a choice until they're eighteen: keep the kid, or send it to an unwinding camp, where the boy or girl is unwound – surgically taken apart piece by piece, the body parts saved for spares. Someone breaks an arm? No big deal – just get another. Have cancer? Eh, whatever. You can replace that part of you with someone else's. Everyone's happy.

Right?

Not the teens who are being sacrificed.

Unwind follows three teens: Connor, 16, whose parents have finally decided to have him unwound because he's too much trouble. Risa, a ward of state, is being shipped off because she's too expensive. And Lev, who is a tithe: since birth, he's known this was to be his fate. His parents have given ten percent of everything they own to charity, and that includes their son.

Connor runs. Risa is on the bus when it crashes, and joins him, a total stranger, in her escape. And Lev is "abducted" by the two desperate teens who are sure they are saving him. But life on the run isn't easy. Not when there's juvie cops and starvation and spies tossed into the mix...

Definitely a great book – a bit creepy, but what can you expect from a plot like that? The characters are pretty believable. Connor has anger issues, Risa just hides all her emotion, and Lev is definitely in denial. But they develop, and the ending wraps up the story well. Eight of of ten waves!

– Cassandra