I had the pleasure of meeting Jennifer Bosworth during the Fierce Reads tour and was glad that I was able to read Struck before the event. It was a fun, fast read with sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, and paranormal elements. But somehow they all worked very well together.
Mia Price is a lightning addict. She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.
Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.
Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.
The first thing you need to know is that this book is a stand alone. Woot! Or, at least, it works as a stand alone. I’m not sure if there’s going to be more to Mia’s story. But I like that there could be, or not, and either way I’m happy with it.
Other than that, my feelings about Struck are so “meh” that it’s difficult to come up with anything to say. I liked it, but didn’t love it. I liked the characters, but didn’t fall in love with any of them or form a deep psychological bond with them as I sometimes do.
I liked the mythology and the conflict. I liked that there was always more than one thing going on. Like, there’s an evil priest and groupies and there’s another group of strange people who seem better than the evil priest but still not good. And there’s this other guy telling Mia to stay away from everyone. And then there’s her family troubles and the small problem of a part of Mia desperately wanting there to be another storm. She wants the lightning.
I liked a lot of the imagery in the book. Especially that of the lightning scars. There’s a bit near the end where Mia is hit by lightning and she imagines the scars that cover her body moving onto her face and into her eyes. I really liked the image that put in my head of the red veins creeping across her face.
Other than that nothing really stands out. So, while I have not one complaint about this book, it was a fun read, I don’t really have anything that I loved about it either.
I will say, I do really like the cover. And I like that Mia isn’t a pretty, pretty dress for no reason. Also, it has a very decent book trailer. And I don’t generally enjoy book trailers.
Have you read it? What did you think?