Sandra Newman

In the aftermath of a devastating plague, a fearless young heroine embarks on a dangerous and surprising journey to save her world in this brilliantly inventive thriller In the ruins of a future America, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star and her nomadic tribe live off the detritus of a crumbled civilization. Theirs is a world of children; before reaching the age of twenty, they all die of a strange disease they call Posies—a plague that has killed for generations. There is no medicine, no treatment; only the mysterious rumor of a cure. When her brother begins showing signs of the disease, Ice Cream Star sets off on a bold journey to find this cure. Led by a stranger, a captured prisoner named Pasha who becomes her devoted protector and friend, Ice Cream Star plunges into the unknown, risking her freedom and ultimately her life. Traveling hundreds of miles across treacherous, unfamiliar territory, she will experience love, heartbreak, cruelty, terror, and betrayal, fighting to protect the only world she has ever known. A postapocalyptic literary epic as imaginative as The Passage and as linguistically ambitious as Cloud Atlas, The Country of Ice Cream Star is a breathtaking work from a writer of rare and unconventional talent.

The Country of Ice Cream Star

My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star and this be the tale of how I bring the cure to all the Nighted States, save every poory children, short for life. Is how a city die for selfish love, and rise from this same smallness. Be how the new America begin, in wars against all hope – a country with no power in a world that hate its life. So been the faith I sworn, and it ain’t evils in no world nor cruelties in no red hell can change the vally heart of Ice Cream Star. In the ruins of a future America, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star and her people survive by scavenging in the detritus of an abandoned civilization. Theirs is a world of children – by the time they reach twenty, each of them will die from a disease they call posies. When her brother sickens, Ice Cream sets out on the trail of a cure, led by a stranger whose intentions remain unclear. It’s a quest that will lead her to love and heartbreak, to captivity and to a nation’s throne, and ultimately into a war that threatens to doom everyone she loves.

edith w.

Amber Burwell

I'm not going to go into too much detail here other than to state that I really don't understand how anyone could enjoy this book. We picked this up for our Young Adult Bookclub, and NOT ONE of us could even muster up the strength to finish this book. 
Now normally, I'm not one for abandoning a book, but I just couldn't finish it. Somewhere around 400 pages in, I decided I'd had enough with the awful plot. Around the 400 page mark the plot takes an even stranger turn, and I just couldn't stick it out. THE PLOT MADE NO SENSE. Especially not in connection with Ice Cream Star's supposed main goal- to find a cure for the disease that causes everyone to die at an early age. Seriously- 400 pages in and they STILL weren't even close to actually working out a plan for finding this supposed cure- what was the whole point of the book?! The characters were completely unlikeable, I didn't feel an ounce of sympathy for Ice Cream Star- she shuns people for their mistakes and decisions whilst simultaneously making THE SAME mistakes and decisions. And there were many, MANY rape scenes in this book, all which had nothing to do with the plot, and were very uncomfortable to read. My bookclub and I all agreed that it seemed like the author couldn't think up a way to make nuanced characters, and decided to define quite a number of them by how badly they treated women, and how many women they raped. (And none of us could understand why Ice Cream Star would want to keep hooking up with "the King of the Rapists" as we referred to him. You shun your friend for shacking up with one of the rapists, and yet you continuously sleep with their rapist leader? What??) 
All in all, we agreed that this was a terrible book. And we tried oh so hard to get through it. One girl stopped at page 5 because she couldn't handle the writing style, and the others stopped around the 200 page mark. Only book in the history of our bookclub that none of us could finish.

The Country of Ice Cream Star

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