Review: Survive by Alex Morel

Hardcover; 272 pages
Published August 2, 2012 by Razorbill

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Hatchet meets Lost in this modern-day adventure tale of one girl's reawakening
Jane is on a plane on her way home to Montclair, New Jersey, from a mental hospital. She is about to kill herself. Just before she can swallow a lethal dose of pills, the plane hits turbulence and everything goes black. Jane wakes up amidst piles of wreckage and charred bodies on a snowy mountaintop. There is only one other survivor: a boy named Paul, who inspires Jane to want to fight for her life for the first time.
Jane and Paul scale icy slopes and huddle together for warmth at night, forging an intense emotional bond. But the wilderness is a vast and lethal force, and only one of them will survive.

When I picked up Survive, I thought it was the kind of thing I was in the mood for. Dark, gritty, and realistic. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really any of those things.

I’ll admit I’m generally not a fan of scenarios where the only survivor is someone who didn’t want to live in the first place.  I get the message; appreciate life, don’t take it for granted, etc. However, all it really does is remind me how unfair life is sometimes to those who DO want to live. Maybe that’s a bit insensitive, but it’s the truth. But I don’t think that’s why I didn’t like Survive.

Jane’s suicidal, apparently. All because her father and grandmother were. Sure, mental illness may be hereditary, but it was Jane’s sole justification for thinking she didn’t want to live. She never really seemed like a depressed girl. She didn’t seem suicidal. She seemed like she was just doing what she thought people should expect from her. It wasn’t believable, to me.

Jane is put in a position where she has to fight for her life, and falls in love along the way. While I kept reading because I wanted to see them get through, I never really felt like they were really into each other. Their relationship seemed to bubble up out of nowhere, and simmer down just the same. I didn’t think it was really developed.

The ending should have upset me, but it didn’t. That’s when I realized just how little I cared for this book. It just wasn’t for me. I encourage others to give it a shot and see if they enjoy, for themselves.