We Are Unprepared

Whether intentionally or not, Reilly's first novel, a climate-change cautionary tale, succeeds most when considered as a transitional book for the last decade's teens, now in their 20s and entering adulthood. After spending those formative years with Suzanne Collins's grand-scale, postapocalyptic worldbuilding in The Hunger Games and more intimate, closer-to-home aftermath stories such as Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It, this book will hold undeniable appeal. Unlike Katniss and Life's Miranda, though, unreliable narrator Ash and his impulsive wife, Pia, are not so appealing (and neither are many supporting characters). Soon after they move from Brooklyn to Vermont, a devastating storm is predicted for their area. Pia wants to team up with off-the-grid "preppers," while Ash aligns himself with others in the town. Their dizzyingly bad choices prove the characters to be worthy of the book's title and push the limits of the reader's patience. Ash's deluded understanding of himself smacks more of Nick in Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl than any plucky YA heroine.