Eden's Root by Rachel Fisher

It is 2033, and the world hovers on the edge of explosion as unexplained crop deaths lead to severe global food shortages. In the United States, the Sickness is taking lives slowly, creeping its way into every family. Fi Kelly has already faced the Sickness in her own family, toughening her beyond her years. But a shocking confession from her dying father will push her toughness to its absolute limits. Saddled with an impossible secret and the mission of saving her little sister, Fi sets out to transform herself into the warrior that she must become to survive the coming collapse. Along the way, she will discover that evil can be accidental and that love can be intentional


The first thing that I noticed about the story was that it's a pretty big read. I read this on my kindle and there were no page numbers but there were 7191 locations that is above the normal teen reads I get that average between 3000-5300 locations.
It starts out describing the world and explaining the main plot of what the story is going to be, the reader gets to see right away that Fi, the main character who is 13 in the beginning of the novel is going to have to grow up fast. She is smart and takes everything her father tells her to heart. She begins preparations for the time when she is going to have to leave town with her little sister when the time comes. There is a lot of stealing and lying and storage of necessities by her over the next couple of months. As well as learning how to fight, hunt, and some plant knowledge for food reasons. She eventually decides that she cannot leave her family and friends and decides that she just cannot leave them without some idea of what's going on. Plus the neighbor boy Sean has noticed she is missing school and that something is going on.
There were some parts of the book where they cannot travel because of the weather and settle down. The story slows and there is not a lot of things happening in those sections. We get to learn more about the individual characters and scout for more food and supplies in the abandoned towns.
This story contains a lot of characters. We start off with around 14 people traveling in the group (the plan was just supposed to be three) so we have a lot of people to get to know and as they travel more people are brought into the story. Not all of them play the major role in the story, but there were a couple places I found the amount of characters hard to remember and especially their ages and which ones were sick or not and what skills they had to provide for the group.
The story eventually starts to involve a little bit of a romance and a lot of complications that the family must get through to find their way to safety.
I was offered a copy of this for review, but when I checked online to see that it was selling for $2 for the ebook I was surprised, especially because of the length of the book. I think it is 100% worth that and more. That is a very good deal for this story.
My favorite character is Sean. I admired him, his actions and how supportive he was of Fi. Fi is a very strong leader and it really shows in this story that she had to grow up very fast in a short amount of time. I was torn at times that some of the adults in the group did not insist that she did not go out to scavenge herself because she knew where they were going and could not risk her getting hurt. But she always held her own and kicked ass when she needed to.
I think the main story behind the story is how the world treats our food supply.
With all the cross breeding of plants and use of chemicals in our foods, if not watched carefully could cause global damage, and in this story to the extent of global famine.
4 Stars

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