Landry Park
by Bethany Hagen
Narrated by: Leslie Bellair
Published by: Penguin Audio
Date Published: February 4, 2014
Source: Penguin Digital Audio
Rating: 2 of 5 stars
Landry Park takes place in a future society that relies heavily on nuclear energy and have separated into a rigid class system. The lower classes, or Rootless, are required to maintain the energy sources and are constantly exposed to radiation which keeps them sick and weak. The MC Madeline is of the highest class, her family being one of the most prominent and her ancestors actually responsible for creating this system in the last war. Madeline wants nothing more than to go off to University but unfortunately her father is adamant that, as his heir, her first duty is to the estate, and that means marriage and babies. But the only boy she can even think about seems to be out of her reach.
So there were a lot of things going on in Landry Park, regrettably not much of it held my interest. The audio narration was mediocre at best. I think that perhaps with a different narrator, I may have connected more with the main character. I could tell that the writing was actually very nice but when read with very little inflection, it all became a bit stale.
I didn't completely understand how this class system came to be or how this society decided it was a good idea to expose large portions of the populace to radiation. There were times when this book almost felt like a historical fiction in the way that the classes were separated and the way each class viewed and interacted with the other. That was particularly well done and was one of the better aspects of this book. The "romance" did not feel the least bit authentic, the love interest was inconsistent and hardly likable at all. Also, I thought that the plot twist near the end was over the top and really took the story in a strange direction.
Overall, I would consider Landry Park to be an okay read but if you're planning to read it, I would probably wait to grab it from the library. However, it's getting pretty good reviews from other readers so maybe it just wasn't for me.
