Published By: Walker Books
Pages: 384
Date Released: 02/09/2021
Gabrielle is a climate-change activist who shoots to fame when she becomes the first teenager to display a supernatural ability to grow plants from her skin. Hester is the millionaire daughter of an oil tycoon and the face of the family business. Theo comes from a long line of fishermen, but his parents are struggling to make ends meet.
On the face of it, the three have very little in common. Yet when Hester and Theo join Gabrielle and legions of other teenagers around the world in developing the strange new “Greenfingers” power, it becomes clear that to use their ability for good, they’ll need to learn to work together. But in a time of widespread corruption and greed, there are plenty of profit-hungry organizations who want to use the Greenfingers for their own ends. And not everyone would like to see the Earth saved…
As they navigate first love and family expectations, can the three teenagers pull off the ultimate heist and bring about a green rising?
*****
Thanks to Walker Books for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I’m going to start this review with what could be quite a controversial statement. As much as I know that climate change is a big issue and the world needs to change if we’re going to survive in it much longer. However, I found in some cases, climate change became almost a fashionable bandwagon to jump on and books had become a bit repetitive when it came to facing this topic.
Green Rising, however, takes a completely unique view on the climate issue and puts young people right in the centre of the fight (which is reflected in our real world). The teenage characters in this book are really realistic. It can be hard to write a character not in your age group, but Lauren has done them justice.
I thought it was a good format as well; it wasn’t just 300 pages of straight prose, it included reports and forms and blog posts and social media and interviews. It puts you in the thick of it and you almost become a character yourself.
It is a well researched book and doesn’t just use climate change as an entertainment device. It could have quite easily become a preachy book but it hit the right balance between explaining why climate change is such a big issue without ramming it down our throats. It is clearly a science fiction/fantasy type book, but it’s steeped in enough reality to keep it believable. And if I’m honest, I’m a little disappointed that our own climate change problems can’t be solved in the same way. How much simpler would things be if we could?
Books By Your Bedside 