Content levels
Trigger warnings
Hero archetypes
Protagonist archetypes
Synopsis
Before the Blight, becoming an adult was something teenagers looked forward to. But now, turning eighteen means certain death. Unless you prove yourself worthy of the Cure. On her seventeenth birthday, Ashen Spencer is blindfolded and escorted to the massive, mysterious building known as the Arc to begin her year of training and testing in hopes that she can earn the Cure-a powerful drug given only to those deemed worthy to survive beyond their eighteenth birthday. Ashen has a chance to rise up from her former life of squalor and be granted a place in society, if the Panel-the mysterious group of powerful men and women in charge of the Arc-deems her year a success. She's assigned to work for twelve months as a servant for a wealthy family whose son is the most alluring young man she's ever met. At first, Ashen is grateful for the opportunity to earn her place in a society she's always dreamed of inhabiting. But as time passes and she begins to learn the truth about the people she admires so much and the home she left behind, she realizes she has a choice: Be part of the disease...Or be part of the Cure. For readers of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and the Selection.
Tags
Is The Cure: A Young Adult Dystopian Novel appropriate for my child?
Suitable for most readers 13 and up.
Teens face death at eighteen in a dystopian society that requires proving worthiness through a year-long testing process. Contains themes of class inequality, systemic oppression, and life-or-death stakes, with moderate peril and emotional intensity but no graphic content.
What to know going in
This book has moderate violence, no sexual content, and mild language. Content notes include captivity, death, and class struggle (see the full list above).
Who'll love this
Teens will connect with Ashen's fight for survival in a world where turning eighteen means death unless you earn the right to live.