The Q by Amy Tintera

Lynnie
Amy   

young adult, fantasy

Set in a world in which Austin, TX was once the site of a pandemic so deadly that the city was walled off and left to fend for itself. No longer part of the United States, The Q, as it's called, is governed by factions. When Lennon Pierce, the only son of an American presidential candidate, is kidnapped and dropped into The Q, his survival and possible escape is dependent upon Maisie Rojas, the daughter of one of the faction's most vicious members.

Lynnie's Review

Another fun action-adventure from Amy Tintera that held my attention from the first page. I've enjoyed several other books by Tintera over the years, including Rebel and Reboot, All These Monsters, and All These Warriors.

Tintera writes about characters in their late teens, young 20s better than most authors; she understands both their motivations (generally, each other), and their voice. I always appreciate that she doesn't write down to them, allows them to act like the mature-ish adults that they are, and generally lets them figure out their own issues. The Q was no exception.

As expected from a Tintera novel, there was plenty of witty banter, and page-turning action, along with characters to cheer for and against and some romantic tension just for fun. This is escapist YA the way it should be done and I enjoyed every moment.

Amy's Review

This is another extreme world created by Amy Tintera in which her characters are trying their best to survive despite dangerous situations.  It was a creatively imagined spin on how governments might deal with epidemics. I could actually envision the world of this novel being sadly plausible. The characters and their social environments felt authentic. And I found myself captured by the story of the boy from the outside and the girl who was trying to help him return despite their growing feelings for each other. I will say that I rolled my eyes a bit that Lennon happened to have just the specific skills which were needed a couple times but Tintera wrote it in such a way that I was able to keep enjoying the ride. As a young adult book, the message that the young generations can improve their own future hit home.

The two audiobook narrators were Kyla Garcia and Robbie Daymond.  They both did a fine job.  I’ve heard Garcia narrate 3 books before—two for which I gave her an A but one which I could not even listen to for 30 minutes because of her terrible trend of emphasizing the last word in every sentence.  In The Q, she was mostly great but she still put too much emphasis on the word “said” whenever she was reading “she said”/”he said” at the end of the sentence.  It reminded me so much of the annoying way she had read that third novel that I looked it up to verify she was *that* narrator. Garcia can be robotic when not acting as a character but, thankfully, her performance in this audiobook was mostly good. I’ll give her a B+.  Daymond was marvelous. He nailed his character and had a nice repertoire of voices. I give him an A. I only wish that the two of them could have agreed about the accents of a few characters (where he gave them Latino accents and she did not). I blame that on the producers.