Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne

Monument 14
(Monument 14, #1)
by Emmy Laybourne
Released |June 5th 2012 by Feiwel & Friends|
Edition |Hardcover, 294 pages|
Source |Library|
Add to Goodreads

Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not—you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.
Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.
But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.
Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.
In Emmy Laybourne’s action-packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.

This was a great read for me. I've been looking for a read like this for a while now and I've been excited to get my hands on Monument 14 ever since it released. I really like how the author made this seem realistic. I thought the way the kids acted and reacted to certain situations made things seem believable. This book reminds me of Gone by Michael Grant and Trapped by Michael Northrop in the sense that kids are trapped/stuck to survive on their own without the aid of any adults. So if you like those two books, then I would definitely recommend this to you. I really enjoyed the story and thought it was action packed and very fast paced :) I finished it within a day!


I really enjoyed reading this story from our main protaganist, Dean. I don't read enough male pov books. Dean was an interesting character to get to know. I like being inside his head and seeing things the way he saw them. From the very first page of the book to the very last page nothing was ever normal. The catastrophe that hit the world and their city from the moment Dean and his brother Alex caught the bus to school. Dean's bus crashed during the hail storm, while Alex's bus made it. But I really liked how the author kept them together and both played a major role within the story. Sometimes I thought Dean's jealousy and 'romantic heart' was a bit childish. But in a sense, it was realistic. And I also liked how there there were young kids incorporated into the story. It made the older kids stepped up to the plate to take care those who couldn't do it for themselves.

I definitely enjoyed this story, from the arguments and fights between the kids to their survival and determination to make it. But I thought the ending was sort of whack. Astrid was my least favorite character as well as Jake. I thought Jake had more potential because in the beginning of the book he stepped up to the plate, but went downhill as the book progress. I just couldn't connect with Astrid though. I think Dean only did what he did in the end as a sorry excuse to get closer to Astrid. But why would you want to get close to her when its plain that she doesn't like him like that. And the shocking reveal about her was like, whoa! I wasn't expecting that. I can't wait to see what happens in book 2 :)