At 17 years old Rosa has never known a world where death isn’t a constant threat. She doesn’t know what it’s like to walk down the street without checking the sky for oncoming dangers.

Trapped in the broken city of Palla, Rosa and her people have long accepted the world’s demise and live their lives in fear of what the Xiets will do next. But when her brother is accused of being a Xiet sympathiser, Rosa and her older sister Gabby are forced to flee the only safety they’ve ever known.

For the first time in their lives Rosa and Gabby are free from the clutches of the terrorists that control their home. But freedom comes at a cost and the more she learns about the world outside of Palla, the more Rosa’s life becomes ensnared in a dark reality.

All Rosa ever wanted to do was protect the people she cared about the most, but what is she supposed to do when the entire world as she knows it is ripped out from under her?

---

Wow, this was short of being shelved a few times but I just kept reading hoping it will get better. The writing is peppered with periods and lacunar in descriptions – it reads like somebody was typing out a message for someone else.

I wasn’t sure what I could trust from this group. There was so much they wouldn’t tell us. We weren’t even allowed to know where they came from in case word got out. They were breaking a great number of laws by being out here and interfering. So they wrapped themselves up in secrets and privacy, even around us. People who had nowhere else to go. No one to tell even if we wanted to.

The plot didn’t go anywhere and all the characters feel ripped off from a cheap sitcom dealing with family life. This went straight to the charity bin.