My Favorite Book!

I mentioned in other blogs that I enjoy reading, but unfortunately I don’t get to do it often during the school year since I have such a busy schedule. However, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite books (if not my favorite): Day Zero by Kelly Devos. This is part of a duology, meaning that two books make up the series. Even though I have read and loved both books, I like Day Zero better. But first, I want to provide a brief synopsis and then go into depth about the plot, the characters, and how they work with each other.

This is the book cover!

This book is about expert coder Jinx Marshall, a 17-year-old girl living in Arizona who spent most of her life prepping for a doomsday she was never sure would come. She drilled and eventually became a master at different exercises, including self-heating meal rations, Krav Maga, lock picking, and extracting water from a cactus. Her parents are now divorced, and she is ready to relax and reach a new level of her favorite video game.

All her training comes in handy when she gets stuck in a burning building with her 8-year-old biological brother, Charles, and her step-sister, Mackenna. Jinx leads them to safety but discovers that the explosion is part of violent events occurring nationwide. Worse, Jinx’s dad is blamed for triggering the chaos. Now trying to evade military forces, Jinx has to lead her siblings to safety and, with the help of many others, makes a break for Mexico. Over time, the siblings learn more about each other, the truth about the attacks, and the things they find worth fighting for. 

With Jinx’s parents divorced at the start of the book, the readers learn about her step-siblings, Mackenna and Toby. Mackenna is mentioned in the synopsis and is Jinx’s age, while Toby is about two years older, making him a freshman in college at the start of the book. Jinx’s stepfather, Jay, is also part of the story and gets arrested as part of a bigger scheme relating to the explosions. Jinx’s biological mother turns out to have political involvement with the explosions and violence happening all over. Readers don’t learn much about her involvement until later in the book, but it makes the story more interesting because it is unexpected. Throughout the story, we find other people who help Jinx and the others get to safety. One prominent character who helps significantly is a boy named Gustavo Navarro, who is actually sent to help them by their father. However, the main characters don’t find this out until much later in the book. These are the most essential characters in the story and appear in both books. 

I love both of these books, but I think that Day Zero is better because there are many more twists in the storyline, and we meet the characters for the first time, so everything they do and experience is new and exciting for us. Since the second book, Day One, builds off the first book, we already know the characters, and while there is a shift in their personalities (i.e., they become mentally more substantial, they become more aggressive, less emotional, etc.), their specific actions each character takes isn’t surprising because we have seen them do similar things in the first book. I will say that even though I liked the first book better, I love the change the characters go through in the second book. Because of the circumstances and situations the characters went through, each one went through a specific shift from before. In the first book, Jinx has no idea what to do and is figuring it out as she goes. Of course, this is the case for Day One, but she is much better at analyzing the situation and becomes faster at making decisions. 

The main reason I think I like Day Zero better is because there isn’t as much going on. The first book is only told from Jinx’s perspective, while the second is told from both Jinx and Mackenna’s points of view. This makes the second book more exciting; however, I think it makes it harder to read. The audience is trying to visualize what is going on while keeping track of all the characters and that, for a good chunk of the book, the characters aren’t all doing the same thing. With the first book being just Jinx’s perspective, it felt much slower because we were only reading her thoughts instead of reading both hers and Mackenna’s. 

Both of these books are exciting, and even though they might be easy to read, they constantly make you feel like you are watching an action movie.  I read Day Zero when I was 16 and just got around to reading Day One last summer. I recommend reading this duology if you enjoy fiction, action, dystopia, young adult or thriller genres. The books can be found at most libraries, on Amazon or online as an ebook if you want to learn more about these characters and their unique but exciting situation that has you on the edge of your seat until the very end!