Boy 23 by Jim Carrington

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 384

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Released: 19th of November 2015 

Boy 23 isn't in My Place any more. He can't see The Screen, he can't hear The Voice. Boy 23 is alone.

One dark night, Boy 23 is thrown in the back of the van and driven out of My Place - the only home he has ever known. He is abandoned in a forest with a rucksack containing the bare essentials for survival. Before the van drives away, a voice tells him he must run as far as he can. His life depends on it. Boy 23 has never known another human. Boy 23 has never even been outside. So who is he? Why do people want to kill him? And more to the point, who is the voice that wants to save him?

What I Have to Say 

I really enjoyed this book. There was such a lot of great mystery in it. From the start, we have no clue who Jesper is or who the Voice is and what their connection to Marsh Flu is. Jesper's voice really draws you in. He sounds perfect for the boy he is, having grown up in seclusion with no contact with another person, his only knowledge coming from videos. 

The replacement of words in Jesper's vocabulary didn't bother me. Though they weren't really needed, since why would he know some words and not others, but there weren't too many of them so it just fell naturally into the way he spoke. Comparing it with Sophie Someone, which I really hated because of the replacement of words, I think it is because Boy 23 just replaces a couple of words whereas Sophie Someone replaced so many. 

If you're looking for a good post apocalypse book, this is a really good one to pick. There's people who've taken advantage of the break down of the society and others who have tried to help. There's so many things that get revealed later in the book too. 

This was a really good read.