Review Detail

Reader reviewed by MssJos

Matilda Cook, "Mattie", is just a normal teenage girl in 1793. Similar to teenage girls today, Mattie spends her time avoiding chores, disliking the boy her mother wants her to marry, and crushing on a boy no one approves of. Mattie spends the majority of her time working in her widowed mother's coffee shop and being teased by her grandfather. Mattie dreams of turning the small coffee shop into Philadelphia's finest establishment, but her dreams are put on hold when Yellow Fever breaks out affecting even those closest to her.

Mattie is instructed to flee the city with her grandfather until the epidemic has passed, but quickly finds that it's not going to be as easy as she thought. The fever rages across the land, seemingly following Mattie everywhere she turns. Struggling to stay alive and help those around her do the same, Mattie's journey leads her to an unlikely destination. A place where she may be able to make her dreams come true after all, sort of.

Just as with Speak, Catalyst, and Twisted, Laurie Halse Anderson does a wonderful job of depicting the voice of teenagers everywhere. Mattie is thrown in to situation after situation where she is forced to use every inch of strength she has. Not only that, but the historical fiction intertwined throughout makes this an educational read as well as an entertaining one.