Review: The Bombs That Brought Us Together

The Bombs That Brought Us Together
Rating: 3/5
Buy or Borrow: Borrow
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher, Bloomsbury! 

Fourteen-year-old Charlie Law has lived in Little Town, on the border with Old Country, all his life. He knows the rules: no going out after dark; no drinking; no litter; no fighting. You don't want to get on the wrong side of the people who run Little Town. When he meets Pavel Duda, a refugee from Old Country, the rules start to get broken. Then the bombs come, and the soldiers from Old Country, and Little Town changes for ever.

Sometimes, to keep the people you love safe, you have to do bad things. As Little Town's rules crumble, Charlie is sucked into a dangerous game. There's a gun, and a bad man, and his closest friend, and his dearest enemy.

Charlie Law wants to keep everyone happy, even if it kills him. And maybe it will ... But he's got to kill someone else first.

Maybe it's because I read this right after Flamecaster (a completely amazing fantasy!) or maybe I just wasn't in the mood but I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. The books not bad, not at all, it's haunting in it's closeness to real life/events. There's a brilliantly tense opening to it, that throws you straight in to the world of the book and what things are like for them. I loved the friendship between Charlie and Pavel and Charlie's determination to befriend him and help him settle in to his new life. Pavel has a horribly realistic awful time and is treated horrendously by the people of the Town, and when the invasion happens, the tables are turned. I felt like it was a very realistic look at what it's like to be occupied by an enemy force. 

So the book wasn't bad and I did enjoy parts of it, like I loved the ending! But for the most part I found my attention wandering, the book grabbed me every now and then but it wasn't one that I loved completely and got lost in. It just wasn't the book for me, for whatever reason, which is a shame because I was excited to read it and loved the sound of it!