Prepped by Bethany Mangle | Reviewed by Michelle

 

Prepped | Bethany Mangle | McElderry Books | Pub: 2/23/21

“Maybe I didn’t want to be safe. Maybe I just wanted to be happy.”

Prepped was our book choice for the Phoenix IRL Book Club for the months of March/April. The synopsis was really intriguing: doomsday preppers, arranged marriages, special training, devastating accident. So many things you could want from a book, especially if you’re into the zombie type apocalypse stuff.

So Prepped follows Becca, who was born into a doomsday prepper family, I mean her grandparents founded the town. We see Becca train and go to school and deal with a tough thing that happens to her family. We see Becca trying to get out of this life because she knows there is more to it. And we have Roy, Becca’s arranged marriage and the ’dumb’ kid. (how he describes himself which you will see, I am not calling anyone dumb)

There was no apocalypse, a tiny bit of the training (one of them had my heart racing) and there was a very tiny bit of romance. Which honestly didn’t bother me that there wasn’t much or any of those things.

What did bother me was that there was no real story. *Spoilerish* We never find out what event happened that made her grandparents start this community, we never find out how successful the plan was. I could have used an epilogue that was maybe 5 years later explaining how Becca and Roy were, how Becca’s family was doing. We were thrown into doomsday land, but I had no reason for why we were there and I am the person who needs the why.

Overall I enjoyed this book and I am definitely going to read Bethany Mangle’s next book Allthe Right Reasons which comes out in 2022.

Synopsis (Credit: Goodreads)

For fans of Jeff Zentner and Katie Henry comes a thrilling and funny debut about a teen raised in a doomsday community who plots her escape with the boy from the bunker next door.

Always be ready for the worst day of your life.

This is the mantra that Becca Aldaine has grown up with. Her family is part of a community of doomsday preppers, a neighborhood that prioritizes survivalist training over class trips or senior prom. They’re even arranging Becca’s marriage with Roy Kang, the only eligible boy in their community. Roy is a nice guy, but he’s so enthusiastic about prepping that Becca doesn’t have the heart to tell him she’s planning to leave as soon as she can earn a full ride to a college far, far away.

Then a devastating accident rocks Becca’s family and pushes the entire community, including Becca’s usually cynical little sister, deeper into the doomsday ideology. With her getaway plans thrown into jeopardy, the only person Becca can turn to is Roy, who reveals that he’s not nearly as clueless as he’s been pretending to be.

When Roy proposes they run away together, Becca will have to risk everything—including her heart—for a chance to hope for the best instead of planning for the worst.