Unwholly

UnWholly is the highly anticipated sequel to Neal Shusterman’s action-packed Unwind. I was fortunate enough to get an autographed copy of the ARC last spring and it was the top prize my students wanted at our Biggest Reader Party in May. Shusterman’s Unwind was published in 2007 – it is still the talk of the library – I have seven copies, all are checked out and there is a hold list for it. Normally, second books in a trilogy are my least favorite…never seeming to add up to the first book. My students are correct, UnWholly is just as great as Unwind. In this dystopian world, adults are valued more than children. Parents can choose to have their children “uwound” until the age of seventeen. When a teen is unwound, their body parts are harvested so adults can live forever. Some teens are tithed to the government and believe that their lives serve a greater good in helping others. UnWholly begins right where Unwind ended. Some new players include a boy named Starkey, a stork (a baby left at someone’s doorstep – the family must raise them) who rebelled in the household he was raised in, escapes unwinding and is now determined to give all storks a voice and betray at the Graveyard; Cam, a modern-day Frankenstein created from the top parts of elite unwinds – a symbol of the future; and Miracolina, a tithe, who will stop at nothing to fulfill her destiny.