Another book freshly baked by the Guardian's Children's books site book cupboard, I welcome you to another (yawn) dystopian novel that everyone's calling the next Hunger Games: The Jewel by Amy Ewing.
Violet Lasting is spending her last days as Violet Lasting as in a few days' time, she'll be sold off to a rich woman as a surrogate. She has no say in the matter, and it's been long determined: each girl takes a test as she enters her teens and if the test proves positive, you spend your next few years away from your family, held but treated well by the royalty, destined to carry a baby of a woman. Then die. Violet is no longer Violet. She is Lot 197. And she just got introduced to the deathly conditions of the game that is The Jewel.
Dystopia is one of those things that I can't help but wonder whether The Hunger Games introduced and now has something to answer for. I can't walk into a bookshop anymore without finding repeats of The Fault In Our Stars or The Hunger Games. The Jewel seems like another one of those books: just another repeat.
But do I think it's anything like The Hunger Games? Well, apart from the fact that the community's divided into sections and people have to do something to suffer with others, it's nothing like The Hunger Games. People need to calm down with comparing every book to another, especially when the book's nothing like it!
Amy, I also commend you for the fact that there was a huge contrast with the futuristic design of the time and yet the completely olden-style auction of girls to carry your babies. I found it quite olden and futuristic at the same time, but I like it whatever it is.
Now I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing that I haven't got a lot to say about this book, but it was a somewhat interesting read and I suppose it would be interesting to see what comes next from Amy. For now, it was an OK read.
• Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
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