Review: Fire & Flood by Victoria Scott

Title: Fire & Flood
Author: Victoria Scott
Series: Fire & Flood #1
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: February 25, 2014
Source: Purchased
Find it Here: Amazon, Goodreads

Time is slipping away....

Tella Holloway is losing it. Her brother is sick, and when a dozen doctors can't determine what's wrong, her parents decide to move to Montana for the fresh air. She's lost her friends, her parents are driving her crazy, her brother is dying—and she's helpless to change anything.

Until she receives mysterious instructions on how to become a Contender in the Brimstone Bleed. It's an epic race across jungle, desert, ocean, and mountain that could win her the prize she desperately desires: the Cure for her brother's illness. But all the Contenders are after the Cure for people they love, and there's no guarantee that Tella (or any of them) will survive the race.

The jungle is terrifying, the clock is ticking, and Tella knows she can't trust the allies she makes. And one big question emerges: Why have so many fallen sick in the first place?

Victoria Scott's breathtaking novel grabs readers by the throat and doesn't let go.

My Thoughts: 

I can’t help but mention the Hunger Games while writing this review of Fire & Flood. Major aspects of these two books are very similar and I feel that’s why Fire & Flood has not been given its fair chance. Just because a book has some similarities to the Hunger Games doesn't mean it has to be a bad book. Fire & Flood is probably one of my favorite books of this year so far and I found myself more emotionally invested than I have been in a really long time!

Here are the similarities between Fire & Flood and The Hunger Games: There are contestants in a competition where there is only one winner and people die along the way. That’s it! Pretty much everything else is different. The main character Tella finds a communication device that tells her she has been invited to compete in the Brimstone Bleed and if she is the winner they will provide a cure to her brother’s fatal mysterious illness. So she follows the instructions and she chooses an egg which will eventually hatch and become her Pandora which will be her animal companion during the competition. There are four legs of the competition, one for each terrain, and they have two weeks to complete each leg which means making it to base camp without dying.

Fire & Flood is a crazy fast-paced adventure right from page one. I could not stop reading it. And I was so invested in almost all the characters, especially Maddox! There was always a new twist or turn around every corner and I had no idea what to expect next. I usually don’t like characters like Tella, who underplay dangerous situations and laugh them off after they’re over but she was quite likable to me. She wasn't annoying and she really stood up and became a leader among her little group.

If you haven’t read Fire & Flood, please, please give it a chance! Don’t let its similarities to The Hunger Games deter you! It is a very fun and exciting read and one of my favorite reads this year!