Tent City (Tent City, #1) by Kelly Van Hull

Tent City by Kelly Van Hull
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A plague of biblical proportions hits the US – literally – when giant swarms of locusts descends on America’s Midwest destroying the food supply for the nation. Because of its similarity to one of the plagues in the Bible, religious leaders take charge of the country (as “The Council”) when traditional institutions fail and fall to the wayside. A mandate goes out that all surviving children between the ages of 5 and 18 are to be gathered into “safety camps” to be protected from rampant starvation. A rumor hints that older youths will be placed in to “reproduction” units to safeguard against population extinction.

Seventeen year old Dani and 5 year old Brody’s parents don’t agree with the strategy and determine to hide their children in the Black Hills at their former summer cabin. The parents remain behind on the farm with fake death certificates for the children to, hopefully, remove them from The Council’s radar.

Dani, Brody and best fried, Kit, make their way to the summer cabin only to find the area already being used as a hideaway for other teens trying to escape internment in the safety camps. The story revolves Dani, Brody, and Kit and the continued operation of the massive and secret “Tent City” under the leadership of Bentley, Callie, and Jack.

I liked so much about this book. The author has given us a variety of interesting and well-defined characters. Each has their own background that is gradually revealed (or kept as a mystery yet to be solved) as the story goes on. Characters display genuine and believable emotion and responses to events. The setting in the South Dakota is different and interesting, and I enjoyed the camp atmosphere. The author introduces real challenges, inherent to having large groups of young adults living together away from civilization, for the characters to overcome.

There were a couple of things that I didn’t like. One, Dani’s parents seem weak. This was the best they could come up with? Pack some food and send your kids to the cabin on a 4-wheeler with absolutely no “intel” beforehand. I just think that more realistically strong parents would have taken a more hands-on approach to getting their children to safety. Two, Dani seems to leave Brody behind and in the care of others way too often and too easily. Granted, she wears herself out about her choices later in the story. (But then goes off and leaves him again later.) And finally, the relationship between Dani and Bentley seems to go from animosity to infatuation overnight. I felt that there should have been more of a build up there. Bentley is pretty moody and Dani does question what’s going on with him but then it seems the next thing we know – he’s totally into her. These are nitpicky, and having said this, none of these issues were enough to keep me from really enjoying the story and wanting to know what happened next.


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