First let me say that I LOVED the cover to this book!!! It is really perfect for this book and I found myself continually turning back and looking at it. It is a true depiction of survival and this is what Orleans is ALL ABOUT!!Orleans is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic, young adult story. This is VERY different than any other dystopian I have ever read. This story focuses more on the truth of what is happening rather than focusing on the characters lives. The author focuses on world building and I truly loved that. Most dystopians are mainly about a love interest and just add a small amount of world building where as I felt as though I was in Orleans with the characters. I loved the main character, Fen. She was soooo intense and I loved the way she kept her word and fought to protect Baby Girl at all costs. She survived so many horrible experiences and wanted nothing more than to give Baby Girl a good life and I just felt myself cheering for her. I wasn't sure about Daniel when he was first introduced. I couldn't decide whether to consider him a good guy or bad guy. In the end I found out. (no spoilers here! HA!) Sherri Smith could have added a romance in with Daniel and Fen but instead she decided to create more of a deep friendship and dependency that made their survival attempts even more intense. I really enjoyed this book. It had lots of moments where I couldn't wait to turn the page to see what happened. This is a young adult book but it did have some intense moments that almost could make it adult and I loved that about it! So needless to say I will be looking for future books by the incredible Sherri Smith!!!

Get that ending away from me.

Likes1. Diversity is a big part of the world building which I loved2. The dialect was just different enough to give it a different feel without being distracting3. No romance!!!!! So refreshing!4. World building is really well done. Super interesting.Dislikes (of a sort. Mostly things I don't know how I feel about)1. I can't decide if I like the ambiguity of the ending, or if I am unsatisfied with it2. Also can't decide if I like that it's kind of like if you were a side story in a larger plot or if I wanted more of that story too. I found it both refreshing and frustrating haha! I do think I could have been happy with another 100 pages (but I'm notorious about liking overly large books).Overall:Definitely a book more people should be talking about! I never would have heard of it if it weren't for La La (and definitely wouldn't have read it so soon if she hadn't sent me a copy!)

Find this and other Reviews at InToriLex This book showed me the power of a great story, I'm inspired. I started this book unsure what I was getting into it, because a dystopian in a destroyed Orleans, divided by blood, is a mountain for an author to tackle. However after losing myself in the main character Fen, it has more than exceeded my expectations. Fen is a determined protagonist who never stops moving and finds a way to escape death and destruction over and over again. She uses a simple dialect, that allows her to move throughout the Delta, but she knows French, Patois, Chinese and is teaching herself Spanish. The book slowly uncovers more and more about what makes Fen who she is, and what she has coped with in her past."In the early days before the sky got so angry at the sea and went to war, there was a piece of land between them, and they called her New Orleans. She was a beautiful place, a city that sparkled like diamonds, sang like songbirds and danced a two step to stop men's hearts."Daniel is a scientist who is ill prepared for what the Orleans is and who occupies it. When he joins up with Fen, their relationship becomes better as they trust and rely on each other. Since most people in Orleans are sick, starving, and clamoring for resources, friendship is a fragile thing grown from necessity. There is really powerful interactions, symbolism and experiences that Fen faces, but she has accepted life as it is fighting hard to not waste her life feeling sorry for herself. The plot moves well, and the contrasting point of views between Daniel and Fen are seamless and compelling. The author succeeds at making Orleans itself a character who reaches out and interacts with the reader."What is one human day in the life of a ecosystem? Nothing. And still we cannot see." I would recommend this to everyone, as a interesting glimpse into Orleans gone bad, and the different ways a virus could effect how we cope and band together. I enjoy speculative fiction, this was special, in it like in real life not everything is fair or happy. The author did a great job of balancing character development and plot. Fen and her journey for survival will stay with me for a long time.

Mini review: Excellent world building and no romance. Full Review:Given the onslaught of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, knowing which authors have simply hopped the trend bandwagon heading to Fametown and which just had a story to tell that happened to fall into the genre can be incredibly difficult. They've all got, more or less, visually arresting covers and a whole lot of marketing to convince you that this one will be the real deal. Well, my friends, Sherri L. Smith has most definitely not written this book in a bid to earn more readers by writing for a popular genre. Where the most popular of this sub-genre these days focus more on romance, Orleans pays attention to world building above all else.Obviously, I really, really love dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, otherwise I wouldn't read as much of it as I do. However, I go into this endeavor well-aware of the weaknesses of such novels. More often than not, the world building receives minor attention, taking a backseat to either mindless action or star-crossed romance. Sometimes, the author does not even offer the slightest hint of how the world evolved into its current state.In Orleans, Smith starts the reader off with explanations, a detailing of how the Gulf coast went down the shitter, and got quarantined from the United States after a series of devastating hurricanes that resulted in an even more disastrous disease. The individuals still living in Orleans, having dropped the new as they're nothing new and shiny about this place anymore, live a very different life than the one we know. The bulk of the population lives in tribes, organized by blood type, as the disease affects the different blood types in varying strengths. Those with AB blood are most affected, but, as a result, they are most to be feared, since they will attack the other types to take their blood, which helps stave off the illness. From the very beginning, Smith starts building her world and she does not stop until the end, and, y'all, her world is creepy.On top of the completely stellar world building, Orleans earns so much respect from me for being diverse. People of every race run around Orleans and, for the most part, skin color and heritage do not matter any more; now blood type does. The heroine, Fen de la Guerre, is dark-skinned, but, honestly, I'm not completely sure what her race is; what I do know is that she's non-white, and so are most of the people running around this book. Also, the cover matches this book perfectly, down to the way her hair's piled on top of her head.Fen really does make a marvelous heroine, in that she looks out for herself and does whatever she needs to do to survive. In a lot of survival situations in novels, the heroine's always trying to save everyone and sacrifice herself, but that rarely strikes me as a realistic. Fen has one person she really cared about and would have died to protect, but that person dies in childbirth in the beginning, asking Fen to take care of her child. Even with this promise in place, Fen considers abandoning the baby at a couple of points to save herself. Later, when she meets a wandering scientist, Daniel, she only helps him to help herself. Her character arc does change a bit, but mostly she's a hardened warrior who has been through the worst and does not want to go back.The downside for me was that I never felt any connection to the characters. While interesting, Fen closes herself off to everyone, including the reader. Despite her sections being told in first person, I really just didn't have a handle on who she was besides a survivor, which, while, utterly believable on the one hand, kept me from engaging completely. Though his sections were in third person, Daniel was still more approachable, but he's so useless in Orleans that I didn't feel much for him either. Also, I'm generally not a fan of multiple points of view when they're not all in either first or third person. The switches between first and third person narration, in general and here specifically, catch me off guard, especially once Daniel and Fen are in the same place.Other factors worth noting are the writing style and the romance. For the former, be warned that Orleans is written with quite a bit of dialect, as Fen speaks and thinks that way. Her dialect, however is quite mild, mostly consisting of the use of 'be' in place of 'are.' Though I'm really not a fan of dialect, this did not bother me. To the latter point, there is no romance. None. If you like post-apocalyptics for romance, you'll want to be passing by this one. As for the rest of us, Orleans serves as a lovely break from the monotony of instalove.Readers who have mostly given up on post-apocalyptics because you're sick of all of the sappy romances and pathetic attempts at world building, Orleans will restore just a little bit of your faith in the genre.