Dry (Review)

I first fell for Neal Schusterman’s writing when I happened upon the Arc of a Scythe series, which has since taken the book-reviewing community by storm. The addition of Schusterman’s son, Jarrod Schusterman, to the writing team, serves only to enhance Schusterman’s style and the two mesh so seamlessly that there’s never a moment that sounds like separate voices. 

Even having read only three of his books now, I think I can say with confidence that Neal Schusterman has a real knack for creating engaging and original plots, usually in the dystopian or apocalyptic YA category, with plenty of twists, turns, and surprises. Adding his son to the writing team certainly didn’t change that. 

Dry, which follows a group of teens living in California when the water runs out, is much more real than Scythe, but is no less dramatic. 

“When we’ve lost the strength to save ourselves, we somehow find the strength to save each other.”

But where the Schusterman team succeeds by leaps and bounds with plot, they fall short when it comes to characterization and the believability when it comes to more minor points.

There are a lot of perspectives in this book. These perspectives are all teens, and one child, who too conveniently and continually evade adult care, which becomes increasingly less believable the more it happens (if you’ve seen my review of Strange Exit, you already know I hate this trope.) Many dip in for one bit of information and dip out again forever, while others stick around. I liked how some of these played into seeing the full scope of what is happening and the different areas in which the drought was affecting people and how. But there was a good number who were around for the long haul and end up narrating a majority of the book. Maybe…too many. 

Although I found all of them interesting, some of these characters were more stereotypical than others and I felt an overall lack of the descriptions and originality I needed to find them memorable. I would have needed a bit more detail to really be able to conjure up so many characters clearly in my mind, many of which were quite important. The information that was supplied was often too general or took too long to come about. For example, we end up still getting descriptions of how our main character looks more than 120 pages in.

“’Tomorrow is going to have to take care of itself for a while,’Alyssa says. Then she adds, ‘Yesterday, too.’”

Many of these perspectives were also introduced far into the story which made it feel as if we were still building towards something greater late in the storyline, which wasn’t exactly true. Perhaps this is a residual effect of the fact that Schusterman usually writes series, in which a set up like this would have made sense. But Dry is a stand-alone. 

The major conflict of this book is obviously the water-shortage, but on their journey to survive the group of teens face a multitude of hurdles. The story quickly falls into a too-regular rhythm of them nearly succeeding in their endeavors only to fail over and over. After a while, this becomes predictable and the stakes no longer feel as high. It ends up seeming like a survival version of Alexander and the terrible horrible no good very bad day, or somewhat like A Series of Unfortunate Events. Eventually, something going right seems less likely than something going wrong. Luckily, the fact that the overarching conflict is so realistic keeps the narrative grounded nonetheless. 

True to what would happen in real life, the Schusterman team was not afraid to make Dry dark. I mean, Neal Schusterman did write about teenagers becoming real-life grim reapers so…is anyone surprised? But Dry tackled some rougher stuff in a way that wouldn’t be too horrifying to a YA audience yet still seems plausible considering the state of the world at the time. I also appreciated that although there was a hint of romance (so faint its more of a crush, really), it wasn’t a large part of the story. Who has the time (or saliva) for making out when you haven’t had anything to drink in days and if you don’t get where you need to go you’ll literally die? The answer is no one. 

The ending wraps up a bit quickly, but I didn’t mind too much because although it was pretty neat it wasn’t a totally wrapped-in-a-bow sort of ending.

“Sometimes you have to be the monster to survive”

I rated Dry 3.5 out of 5 stars. Fans of the Arc of a Scythe series will like this too.