The Gardener by S.A. Bodeen - Review

It's funny how things work out, I had The Gardener featured as a Waiting on Wednesday recently...and only a few weeks later Ksenia at Macmillian Children's Publishing Group emailed me to see if I might like reading the Galley. I of course jumped at the chance it just sounded awesome.

Synopsis via goodreads:

Mason has never known his father, but longs to. All he has of him is a DVD of a man whose face is never seen, reading a children’s book. One day, on a whim, he plays the DVD for a group of comatose teens at the nursing home where his mother works. One of them, a beautiful girl, responds. Mason learns she is part of a horrible experiment intended to render teenagers into autotrophs—genetically engineered, self-sustaining life-forms who don’t need food or water to survive. And before he knows it, Mason is on the run with the girl, and wanted, dead or alive, by the mysterious mastermind of this gruesome plan, who is simply called the Gardener.

Will Mason be forced to destroy the thing he’s longed for most

The Gardener hits on several issues, we ourselves might be faced with in the not so distant future; widespread famine as well as over population, which for me, brought this tale of fiction soaring a little to close to home, for my taste. Yet at the same time left me thinking about the hard questions – what are we as a planet, leaving for our children? What messes are we trying to clean up that our parents left for us, and how are we adding to it, in the end possibly making it worse not better. Do we as a society ever stop to think, when making, what could be life altering decisions, what those decisions might cost us 30+ years from now.

I am sad to say, that I don't think our policy makers are thinking that far ahead, how could they be? I mean just outside my door right now, there's construction going on – they are building a BIGGER and BETTER highway...the only problem, it's not going to be done for years – and when it is the population of the Northern VA area will have at least doubled, making what they just did, obsolete. Granted this is a NOT at all what The Gardener was about – and MUCH smaller of a scale...but it's true.

We cut down trees to build roads, we are "sacrificing" the planet to make things easier for ourselves, I see it ever day – now, I am just some photographer and book blogger – I know I cant save the world...but someone once said "Be the change you want to see in the world." So I try to do my part...I recycle, I used cloth diapers with my son and nursed him. I am sure there are other things I can do, we all can...but to bring this back to The Gardener....

The Gardener is a thought provoking read, as you can see, it brought up a lot of thoughts, for me. But I don't want you to get the sense that it's not thrilling...because it very much is. I sat down with it, and with in a few hours I was telling my kids to SHHH, I just had one more chapter to finish and at that point I had no choice but to keep reading! (They were far from pleased.)

What I got with The Gardener was not at all what I thought I would get, it was better, it's tough to get me thinking this hard, let me just tell you - but The Gardener did!

Bottom Line – The Gardener offers a quick paced, thrill ride full of emotions. With an amazing protagonist, whom you can't NOT care about, and a subject that leaves you thinking The Gardener for me was a 4 mushroom read. It was a touch predictable, but then when I thought I knew who the bad guy was, it turned out I was COMPLETELY wrong (I just love that!). This would be an excellent read for a teenage, reluctant reader who loves all things science or techy in nature, or shows like Star Trak and Deep Space 9 or Caprica!

The Gardener
By: S.A. Bodeen
240 Pages
Published: May 25, 2010
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

I received my copy via Ksenia Winnicki over at Macmillan Children's Publishing Group for my honest review.