THE Q

Two teenagers come together from opposite sides of a post-pandemic world.

In a dystopian future, Austin, Texas, is now a sealed-off independent quarantine zone known as the Q. It’s where 18-year-old Maisie Rojas has grown up. The Spencer gang rules the north, while the south is under the control of the Lopezes, but there’s a turf war brewing and other incumbents vying for power. When Lennon Pierce, the 19-year-old son of a U.S. presidential candidate, is kidnapped and dropped into the Q via parachute from a plane, he is given a newly developed short-acting vaccine. He now has 72 hours to leave or else become a permanent resident. The populace inside the walled-off zone’s borders has adapted to live with the deadly virus but still pose an infection threat to the outside world. But the only legal exit into the U.S. lies on the other side of the Q, deep in Spencer-controlled territory, where terror, danger, and possibly death await. Maisie and Lennon become allies: She will lead him out and, on the way, try to fix some of the south’s leadership problems. This is a thrilling adventure in which the risks are convincingly high, the action nonstop, and the budding romance between Maisie and Lennon believably charming. Both characters go through interesting arcs as they handle generational mistakes and the intersections of power, fear, and history. Orphaned Maisie’s mother was from the U.K., and her father was Mexican American; Lennon is White.

Ridiculously fun, romantic, and action-packed.