The Enemy by Charlie Higson

The Enemy by Charlie Higson takes place in London about a year and a half after a terrible disease has sickened all of the adults over the age of 14. This disease rots the brain, leaving the adults unable to talk or really even think. Their skin is covered in infected boils and sores. Worse yet... they eat children. The children of London have banded together in different areas to try to continue living and hiding from the grown-ups. One group lives in an old grocery store. They have a pretty good system for scavenging food and supplies, and keeping everyone relatively safe. One afternoon, a strange boy shows up at the store, followed by a vicious band of grown-ups. Jester tells the Holloway kids about a new colony of kids who are living at Buckingham Palace. They are growing food, raising animals, and are really making a good life for themselves. Jester's job was to travel around London, searching for other groups of kids to join the Palace group. (Unfortunately, Jester left with a party of 5 and was the only one who made it alive.) Arran, the Holloway group leader and Blue, another group's leader confer and decide to band together and head to Buckingham Palace, following Jester. On the way, they meet many groups of grown-ups who seem to be behaving differently - they are "hunting" and grouping together, almost as if they are communicating and following some sort of plan. They also meet up with a group of kids who have been living on the streets. In a skirmish, one of the girls accidentally shoots Arran and he dies. This leaves Maxie, Arran's second in command the leader of the Holloway kids. Things seem too good to be true once the group finally makes it to the Palace. After a few days, however, Maxie and Blue begin to see David's (the Palace kids' leader) true plan - to take over and rule all of the kids in London. They try to make a plan to escape, but David catches them and locks them up. Now it seems all the kids they were supposed to be protecting will fall under the dictatorship of David and his minions with no chance of escape.

WOW! What an amazing book! It reminded me a little of I am Legend combined with The Scorch Trials and Lord of the Flies. I read this one in a day because I just had to find out what happened. Now I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel - this one definitely has a cliffhanger ending!! There is some pretty gory violence, so I would recommend this to a more mature audience. Anyone who liked The Maze Runner/Scorch Trials, The Hunger Games Series, or just enjoys a good science fiction book will really get into this book!