This one was off to a slow start, and it was pretty much slow throughout. What compelled me to finish this book to the end was wondering whether this Clearview group was legit or if there was something more to them.

You also follow through Bex and her life at home, which doesn’t seem very pleasant to start with. Her mom tries to change her despite her orientation, there’s financial issues at the home, and her brother is, quite frankly, an ahole. You quickly figure out Bex is into guns, and survival training. There’s extensive description on how she takes care of the guns, how she loads them, fires them, and we can go on. It gets tedious and lets the plot slow to a crawl. If you want intrigue and surprises, this isn’t going to happen until much later. Much much later.

There’s also focus on Bex and Lucy. They both seem to compliment each other and there is slight chemistry between the two of them but it’s not a romantic type of love story that you get if that’s what you’re looking for. They’re polar opposites and compliment one another but you also get that feeling it’s nice while it lasts.

There isn’t much to the plot until the last third of the novel, which is disappointing. However it’s jarring to see how much of the concept of survivalism is drilled into Bex and pushes her to the edge to the point of becoming paranoid over every minute detail. It’s sad to see what her parents attempt to make her do, when it comes to the subject of her brother. It’s also disappointing to see hardly any mention of Clearview except for smidgens here and there and although it plays a part in the plot, it’s not what you think and you wish there was more to it. It would have made the book much more interesting.

It wasn’t the best, but not the worst either. I’d suggest to take this out from the library instead of a purchase. ( )

Radical is a book about a young woman coming of age in the midwest. She is struggling with many different issues such as sexual orientation, economic struggles and believes she must be prepared for the end times. Bex spends much of her time "prepping" for the end times and this soon gets her in trouble. The story takes a turn when she is arrested because of the group her brother and herself have joined. I found the book to be a little cliche in that does she really have to be an angry lesbian against the world? But I did like that she found hope in the end and that involved taking another route. ( )

This book draws you right into the mind of Bex, a queer teen from a struggling family in rural Michigan, convinced and obsessed with the imminent demise of civilization and intently training with guns and survival skills. Bex's voice is so distinct, so real, and her perspectives so meticulously described as to feel genuine and understandable (even to a staunch anti-gun person like me). I loved this book and I hope to press it into the hands of many youth, families, and educators. Bex's world is complex--her family's poverty and continued grasping at the middle class, the sexism she encounters in her communities and her family, the silences and secrets she doesn't quite understand and see in time in her family members, the powerfully appealing illusion of control that survivalist messages and gun rights advocates propagate, having to hide her sexuality from her family and the depth of her involvement in the local survivalist 'gun club' from her girlfriend are handled with such precision and such an assured understanding of Bex's perspective. The prose is gripping and the ending is breathtakingly stark, completely unsentimental, yet honest and compassionate, even hopeful, by the last chapter. I loved this book. ( )

This realistic contemporary novel is for mature young adults and up. I say that because it has some light lesbian sexual interplay. But it is a worthy read for any young adult especially those concerned about an upcoming societal collapse.

Bex, short for Rebecca, is a 16-year-old obsessed with survival in the upcoming chaos. She is a gay young woman who is not yet come out but her clothes and hair and demeanour mark her as someone different. Her parents do not accept her as she is and her mother is driven to change her and make her fit in with her idea of a daughter.

Bex loves guns. This concept is so foreign to me I thought I might have trouble connecting, but the author, E. M. Kokie, smoothly brings us into the world of rifles, hand guns, bows and arrows, and more. Whether or not we believe in society’s eminent collapse and the necessity of strategic preparation, we understand how deeply Bex does.

The author deftly steers us in one disastrous direction and then presents us with another, more surprising but also more logical, disaster. Bex, who has done nothing but train to prevent ever becoming helpless or under the control of another, finds herself in exactly that situation. For the sake of her family, she endures the unendurable. She must make the most difficult decision of her life. The consequences will change her future and all her relationships forever.

Seldom does a book ever keep me up to three in the morning reading but by the time I was halfway through, I was committed to finishing it. Bex may be as different from me as morning is from night, but I wanted this girl to survive intact and couldn’t sleep not knowing what was going to happen to her. There are no happy endings in real life but the author leaves us with hope for a better life for a courageous, loyal, young woman who was never given a break.

I was given a free copy for review. ( )

*** Warning Spoilers *** Bex is a prepper, she is ready to survive a catastrophic event but she is not ready to be accused by the FBI of terrorism after joining a local gun club. I didn’t particularly care for this book. It took forever for the plot to go anywhere. The FBI raid and arrest should have happened much earlier in the story. I would have liked to have read more about Bex’s time in jail, particularly between the time she spilled everything to her lawyer and when she got out. At the end, the author turned the book into a diatribe against the dangers of prepping, which was extremely off putting. Overall, not a book I would reread or recommend. ( )