Title: Plus One
Author: Elizabeth Fama
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Date of Publication: April 8, 2014
Blurb:
Divided
by day and night and on the run from authorities, star-crossed young
lovers unearth a sinister conspiracy in this compelling romantic
thriller.
Seventeen-year-old Soleil Le Coeur is a Smudge—a
night dweller prohibited by law from going out during the day. When she
fakes an injury in order to get access to and kidnap her newborn niece—a
day dweller, or Ray—she sets in motion a fast-paced adventure that will
bring her into conflict with the powerful lawmakers who order her
world, and draw her together with the boy she was destined to fall in
love with, but who is also a Ray.
Set in a vivid alternate reality and peopled with
complex, deeply human characters on both sides of the day-night divide,
Plus One is a brilliantly imagined drama of individual liberty and civil
rights, and a fast-paced romantic adventure story.
Excerpt;
Wednesday
4:30
A.M.
It
takes guts to deliberately mutilate your hand while operating a
blister-pack sealing machine, but all I had going for me was guts. It
seemed like a fair trade: lose maybe a week’s wages and possibly
the tip of my right middle finger, and in exchange Poppu would get to
hold his great- granddaughter before he died.
I
wasn’t into babies, but Poppu’s unseeing eyes filled to spilling
when he spoke of Ciel’s daughter, and that was more than I could
bear. It was absurd to me that the dying should grieve the living
when the living in this case was only seven miles away. Poppu needed
to hold that baby, and I was going to bring her to him, even if Ciel
wouldn’t.
The
machine was programmed to drop daily doses of Circa-Diem and vitamin
D into the thirty slots of a blister tray. My job was mind- numbingly
boring, and I’d done it maybe a hundred thousand times before
without messing up: align a perforated prescription card on the
conveyor, slip the PVC blister tray into the card, slide the conveyor
to the right under the pill dispenser, inspect the pills after the
tray has been filled, fold the foil half of the card over, and slide
the conveyor to the left under the heat-sealing plate. Over and over
I’d gone through these motions for hours after school, with the
rhythmic swooshing, whirring, and stamping of the factory’s powder
compresses, laser inscribers, and motors penetrating my wax earplugs
no matter how well I molded them to my ear canal.
I
should have had a concrete plan for stealing my brother’s baby,
with backups and contingencies, but that’s not how my brain works.
I only knew for sure how I was going to get into the hospital. There
were possible complications that I pushed to the periphery of my mind
because they were too overwhelming to think about: I didn’t know
how I’d return my niece when I was done with her; I’d be
navigating the city during the day with only a Smudge ID; if I was
detained by an Hour Guard, there was a chance I’d never see Poppu
again.
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17934493-plus-one
About Elizabeth Fama
Elizabeth
Fama is the author of Plus One (FSG, 2014), Monstrous Beauty (FSG,
2012), a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection and Odyssey Award
honor winner, and Overboard (Cricket Books, 2002), an ALA Best Books
for Young Adults. She is represented by Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger,
Inc.
Website: http://www.elizabethfama.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/elizabethfama
Tumblr: http://elizabethfama.tumblr.com/
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