A Girl With a Story

Grounded is a thrilling novel set in the Amish countryside and following protagonist Lydia Troyer. However, don’t let that trick you into thinking this is calm light read. Lydia is not like the other girls in her Amish village. When she was just a baby, she was found in dumpster, electrical currents running wild and a strange figure telling her “father” to take her in and keep her safe. For a backstory, in 2050 Operation Source Code has infected “volunteers” with a virus to help stabilize the energy crisis. As the way many sci-fi novels go, there are disastrous results. Lydia is connected to these dark experiments. Lydia is forced to leave her Amish village to help her father, after a stroke,and once around energy for the first time, her life takes on a whole new meaning. No longer able to hide from the "Greens", Lydia is forced to confront who she is and who she wants to be. This is a highly detailed and very well written debut novel. I was sucked in by the prologue and didn’t let go until the very last page. I could do without love triangles, but that is just a personal preference. I found that the novel was a bit of a mix of Darkest Minds and Origin, which were high on my list last year. Overall, I enjoyed the story and will probably continue on with the sequel.