The Lost Code: Book One of the Atlanteans, by Kevin Emerson (June 2012)

The morning after I arrived at Camp Eden, I drowned for the first time.

Owen Parker has always felt out of place, odd man left out.  He is from Yellowstone Hub, and he took the MagTrain to what used to be Minnesota because his dad entered him into a drawing to win a spot at Camp Eden, a summer camp in the EdenWest Biodome.

He kept saying how a month at Camp Eden was a month I didn't have to spend scraping by out at Hub, a month when I didn't have to help him with his breathing issues, the nebulizer packs and the beige phlegm that never seemed to get all the way down the drain, a month when I could have fun like people used to.

The camp used to be called Camp Aasgard.  Lake Eden was once part of Lake Superior, and this site has been a summer camp for 200 years.  Viking ruins were rumored to have been found here. 

There used to be 10 billion people on Earth, but 60% of the population was lost during the Great Rise, when global warming and the climate spun out of control.  Wars, plague and chaos have followed in its wake.  Now the population lives in soaring temperatures and the ozone is depleted.  The only safe havens are the thin rim of land in the Habitable Zone and the five Eden domes.

Life in the Eden West biodome looks idyllic.  The temperature remains at 22-degrees Celsius, the ideal summer temperature before the Great Rise.  After 15 years of construction, the dome was completed in 2056.  It is 6-kilometers in diameter, home to 200,000 people.  But there are rumors that the Eden domes are failing. 

Owen, awkward and prone to injuries, drowns on his first full day at Camp Eden.  Instead of dying, he sees a siren in the water.

-You are not at the end, it said.
-I'm dead, I thought back.
-No.  This is just the beginning...Find me.  In the temple beneath the Aquinara.

-What is oldest will be new.  What was lost shall be found.
-What?
-Find me, Owen.

The life guard, Lilly Ishani, saves Owen from the water.  She tells him not to trust anyone.

Her gaze was still so odd...Then she quickly leaned in.  "No matter what happens in the next couple days, don't tell them anything.  And especially don't tell them how long you were down there.

Later Owen wakes to bandages around his throat, but he can't remember getting cut or scratched while he drowned. 

I ran my fingers over the bandages.  Hotter.  And I was starting to have this weird urge.  I didn't get what it was, I just knew that I couldn't lie there anymore.  I had to get up.  Had to do something.  It was almost like I wasn't in control of myself.

Owen suddenly finds himself rapidly changing, emotionally and physically.  Are there others who are like him?  What has caused the changes?  Who is the siren?  And what is EdenWest hiding?  Owen follows his instincts and learns the truth about who he really is. 

The Lost Code is a SUPER-exciting read!  I hope Kevin Emerson is busy writing the second book, because once this book hits the shelves, readers are going to demand book two immediately!

Rating:  10 out of 10 stars
*mild language, mild romance

Bruiser, by Neal Shusterman (2010)

If he touches her, I swear I'm going to rip out his guts with my bare hands and send them to his next of kin for lunch.

Sixteen-year old Tennyson and Brontë Sternberger are twins, and Tennyson is not happy that his sister has a date with the Bruiser, Brewster Rawlins.

As for the Bruiser, he has no mother.  No father either.  No one knows what the deal is there.  All people know is that he lives with his uncle and an eight-year-old brother who looks like he's being raised by wolves.  And this is the family my sister wants to date into.  My sister obviously was never visited by the common sense fairy.

Tennyson, who has some habits of bullying, plots to spoil the date and to prevent Brontë from spending time with Brewster.  Despite how his sister feels, Tennyson feels he needs to protect her.

So hate me all you want, Brontë, for what I did here; but that will pas - and someday, if we're lucky, we'll both look back at this day and you'll say 'Thank you Tenny, for caring enough to protect me from the big and the bad."

Brontë feels drawn to Brewster, and she wants to try to understand him.  As she gets to know him, she learns that Brewster has a photographic memory and he loves poetry.  On their second date, they meet to go on a hike and have a picnic.  Brontë accidentally sprains her ankle, but after Brewster performed some reflexology, it healed quickly.  But Brewster suddenly began to limp.  Something similar happened to Tennyson after he got to know Brewster better.  The twins wonder, what's going on?

In his eyes, I could see the battle going on inside home.  The desire to hide a terrible secret fighting with the desire to set it free.

Bruiser is very different from Neal Shusterman's other novels.  I think it makes the reader think about family, friendship and what it means to really care about someone. 

Rating:  9 out of 10 stars

To check this book out at NOLS, click HERE!