cover image Feuds

Feuds

Avery Hastings. St. Martin’s Griffin, $18.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-250-05771-6

Hastings’s cluttered debut introduces a segregated society divided into elite Priors, engineered in utero for perfection, and the oppressed Gens who serve and resent them. Cole, a Gen cage-fighter in the brutal FEUDS competition, is hired to get close to Davis Morrow, an up-and-coming ballerina whose father is running for election on a pro-segregation platform. A photo of Davis fraternizing with a Gen would destroy her father’s political career. Cole falls for Davis, and his thoughts on the matter are equally predictable: he had “assumed... all Priors were the same. But now he’d met one, gotten to know one... and he couldn’t get her out of his head.” Meanwhile, Davis is endangered by a spreading virus that only attacks Priors, and her society goes into denial, dumping the bodies in Gen neighborhoods and refusing to admit that anyone is ill. The disparate elements of the story line, a familiar combination of dystopian adventure and forbidden romance, don’t cohere smoothly. This trilogy opener ends on a cliffhanger. A Paper Lantern Lit property. Ages 12–up. Agent: Stephen Barbara, Foundry Literary + Media. (Sept.)