A couple of my adolescent literature students recommended
The Compound by S.A. Bodeen a semester or two ago, and I saw only last week it was on the office shelf, so I picked it up. I know I always tell my students that we should take our students' recommendations as seriously as we want them to take ours, as teachers. And yet, I balked. But I was glad I guilted myself into reading this one. Bodeen sets up this story good and it goes strong all the way through. Eli is torn from his twin brother and maternal grandmother for six years when his father takes Eli, his sisters, and their mother into The Compound, a nuclear bomb shelter he's built over the last few decades, meant to keep them alive for at least 15 years. That is, until things begin to go awry. And it's only then that Eli begins to ask questions about why they're stuck down there for another seven years. It's a thriller.
