Helped by her geeky next-door-neighbour Kelton McCracken whose survivalist, prepper father is the only person in the neighbourhood ready for the tap-out, Alyssa and Garrett set out to find their parents but that tap-out has made Southern California a dangerous place filled with dangerous people and Alyssa, Kelton and Garrett will need to make impossible decisions and form alliances with people they’re not sure they can trust if they’re to survive … When the authorities announce a water distribution point will be set up, Alyssa’s parents decide to go and see what they can get … but don’t come back. It isn’t long until the local stores have run out of bottles of water and soda and soon Alyssa’s family are reduced to storing water in the bath from bags of melted ice cubes. A drought has been going on for months and everyone’s used to the restrictions such as not watering your lawn and not taking long showers, but today it’s different: because today the water has run dry after Nevada and Arizona take the decision to block off the main dams that supply the state and preserve the water for themselves. It’s June 4 thin the very near future. 16-year-old Alyssa Morrow lives with her parents and 10-year-old brother Garrett in Southern California. I earn commission on any purchases made through these links.

You can buy DRY by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman from Amazon USA, Amazon UK, Waterstone’s or UK. Each of them will need to make impossible choices to survive. When her parents go missing, she and her younger brother must team up with an unlikely group in search of water. Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation and violence.

Life has become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t take long showers, don’t panic. The drought – or the tap-out, as everyone calls it – has been going on for a while. Everyone’s going to remember where they were when the taps ran dry.

Neal shusterman dry