The List by Patricia Forde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

This is a middle-grade book about the dangers of limiting your vocabulary! So get your dictionary and... oh, wait, it's not about that at all!

It's *actually* about a SF dystopian world after all the ice melted and the dangers of wrong thinking made the scared Noa build an ark, stuff all his people aboard, and be very, very careful about striking certain words out of the common lexicon of regular words.

Our young protagonist, Letta, is a journeywoman who's job is to collect the proscribed words, and later, she becomes the master.

I thought it was good based on these basic ideas and the premise, but if you think you've seen this before in 1984 or the Giver, then you're right. In fact, you've probably seen it in numberless short stories and even quite a few tv shows.

Is it worth reading? Does the plot boldly go where none other of its kind goes? Sadly, no, if you're a reader of YA. It's pretty potboiler with standard situations, but the ending does go bold.

Is it solidly written and keep my interest? It's solidly written, but I did have a few issues keeping my interest going, but that may be because it's middle-grade literature.

I do think it's better than The Giver, however, so that might be something to consider when looking for small-town ethics and a rigidly stratified society that meets unrestricted ideas for the first time.

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