Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Among the Hidden (Shadow Children, Bk 1)

Among the Hidden (Shadow Children, Bk 1)
smith-jones avatar reviewed on + 47 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


This story surprised me with its concept of a totalitarian government taking over the lives and choices of its citizens, although the restrictions applied to everybody, the affluent citizens had more flexibility and a wide range of privileges.

The regulations on population control were hard to accept, to be mandated to have only two children is a concept that in our democratic society is hard to envision.

It reminded me a bit of The Giver in the sense that a set parents was only allowed to have two children. In this very regimented and controlled society a third child was considered illegal and said child if discovered would be put to death. This story of Luke, a third child who lives among the hidden and in the shadows of his own house.

The plot has adventure, suspense, danger, contrasting role models and loss. The characters possess courage and cowardice, hope and lack of it, very contrasting.

This is also the story of two very different hidden children, a farmer boy and a girl born to privilege, that although grow in very separate social scales, have that one thing in common that makes them unite and form a friendship that makes them risk being discovered, they are both a third child.

My 11yr. old son read it before me and he found it very interesting. He recommended it to me and I'm glad I read it.