Review - Survive by Alex Morel

Title: Survive

Author: Alex Morel

Series: Stand Alone

Pages: 272

Published:  August 2nd 2012 by Razorbill 

ISBN: 9781595145109

Source: Around The World Tours

Description:  Jane is on a plane on her way home to Montclair, New Jersey, from a mental hospital. She is about to kill herself. Just before she can swallow a lethal dose of pills, the plane hits turbulence and everything goes black. Jane wakes up amidst piles of wreckage and charred bodies on a snowy mountaintop. There is only one other survivor: a boy named Paul, who inspires Jane to want to fight for her life for the first time.  Jane and Paul scale icy slopes and huddle together for warmth at night, forging an intense emotional bond. But the wilderness is a vast and lethal force, and only one of them will survive.

I Give This ...

I had high hopes for this one.  It just sounded like it might have an edge and grittiness that other books don't have.  It is about a suicidal teen and a plane crash after all.  It wasn't all that I hoped for.

 I couldn't decide how to feel about Jane.  I was expecting a deeply troubled girl with an extreme emotional state.  But, I didn't get that at all.  In fact, it seems  like she blames her suicidal tendencies on family history.  Mental illness like depression might have families links, but suicide does not I believe.    Thankfully we skip right over that and find a girl who really has a desire to live.  There are so many instances were she could take the easy way out, but she never does.  I think it would take an extremely strong desire to live to get through the situation she's put in.

I think the really strong point of this novel is Paul.  He really seems to put Jane through the steps.  He pushes her boundaries and makes her see things in a new light.  She didn't need therapy, she needed someone like Paul (and maybe a life or death situation).  I admired him for that considering he had troubles of his own.

The actual survival part of this story was not as intense as I had imagined.  Jane's does it with little more effort than the show Man vs. Wild.  I really doubt that average person can do this.  And who survives a plane crash while they are in the bathroom?  There were just a few scenarios that I found not very believable.