Review: Best of All Worlds by Kenneth Oppel

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Welcome to THE DOME

dun dun dun

SUMMARY:
We follow Xavier Oak, a 13 year old boy with a blended family. He is currently on a summer trip with his father and pregnant stepmother at their lake cottage. He is NOT happy with this as he wanted to stay home with his mother and brother and play D&D with notable Cool Girl Serena. So he wakes up on the second day of the trip ready to text Serena about their campaign.

BLEHEHEHEHEH

That's right. There is a whole goat outside. The lake? Gone.

They wander around for a few days. They manage to figure out that they are in a dome due to rocks and math. UHOH! Right when you thought things couldn't get worse, stepmom goes into labor.

Three years pass.

Another family arrives in the dome. And they are the worst kind of monsters you could imagine. They are white people from the south.

MY THOUGHTS:
This book got WAY more political than I could have imagined. Which is great! I love a book that has something to say. However this felt super heavy-handed. It kinda took over the entire plot, which I was invested in at the beginning! But it became a little bit of a slog to get through somewhere in the middle. Very much became look at these redneck people what with their conspiracy theories and racism and balloons. Like man I just wanna know more about this dome. I don't care that you are scared of this mostly reasonable man because of his *checks notes* ultra scary PTSD. Like yeah he sucks but like honestly his reaction to The Dome is much more realistic.

FINAL OPINION:
Overall this book was a bit of a nothing burger. Not much happens. I was expecting more of a mystery, or at least some suspense, since this is a survival thriller. The ending happens and you are just like. Oh. So it was...ok. The characters are pretty shallow and unlikable. Like, I wish we learned a bit more about who these people were pre-dome. You don't really see why any of them would want to get out, and honestly they don't seem to worked up about it either. I guess the book was fine. Not a recommend, but there are much worse books out there.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scholastic for providing an advanced copy! All opinions are my own.

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