Synopsis:

For fans of Jeff Zentner and Katie Henry comes a thrilling and funny debut about a teen raised in a doomsday community who plots her escape with the boy from the bunker next door.

Always be ready for the worst day of your life.

This is the mantra that Becca Aldaine has grown up with. Her family is part of a community of doomsday preppers, a neighborhood that prioritizes survivalist training over class trips or senior prom. They’re even arranging Becca’s marriage with Roy Kang, the only eligible boy in their community. Roy is a nice guy, but he’s so enthusiastic about prepping that Becca doesn’t have the heart to tell him she’s planning to leave as soon as she can earn a full ride to a college far, far away.

Then a devastating accident rocks Becca’s family and pushes the entire community, including Becca’s usually cynical little sister, deeper into the doomsday ideology. With her getaway plans thrown into jeopardy, the only person Becca can turn to is Roy, who reveals that he’s not nearly as clueless as he’s been pretending to be.

When Roy proposes they run away together, Becca will have to risk everything—including her heart—for a chance to hope for the best instead of planning for the worst.

When I was invited to read Prepped by Bethany Mangle through BooksForward, I was excited by the premise. It sounded applicable to the current times and unlike anything I’d read before. Not only did I read this young adult novel about doomsday preppers during a pandemic, but I was also stuck at home in Texas during an apocalyptic snowstorm unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

“I’m so far out of orbit of the standard social circles—Nerd, Jock, Goth, Hot Girl, Skater—that I’m more of a third moon, not a planet. Actually, I’m just like Pluto, the planet that suddenly wasn’t a planet anymore, demoted and excluded once my classmates were old enough to understand that my parents are doomsday freaks.“

Bethany Mangle, Prepped

While Prepped didn’t quite go in the direction I thought it would, I was still entertained. It’s a solid debut, but leaves room for the author to grow. I enjoyed her use of humor and attention to detail, but many of the characters came across as flat, lacking the qualities to make them more realistic. I wanted more backstory, more of an explanation to how these people ended up in this different lifestyle.

Much of the novel’s focus is on the relationship between the main character, Becca, and her younger sister, Katie. And while I believed in Becca’s love for her sister, I wished there had been more development. Their mother is also set up to be one of the main antagonists, but she never felt like a compelling part of the story, just someone to drive the plot.