Book Review of Planet Urth by Jennifer and Christopher Martucci

Goodreads Summary:  More than two hundred years into the future, human beings are an endangered species. The planet has been battered by war, its inhabitants plagued by disease and death. Few humans survived and remained unaffected. Most changed dramatically and evolved into something else entirely. Irrevocable alterations caused by chemical warfare have created a new species. North America is in ruins and has been overtaken. Humanity has fallen at the hands of mutants known as Urthmen. Seventeen-year-old Avery is alive and unchanged. But she has not been immune to the harshness of the new world. She has lived on the run for much of her life, in terror.
After losing her father, Avery is the sole guardian of her eight-year-old sister, June. Avery is now charged with June’s safety as well as her own, a nearly impossible task.
Forced to hide deep in the forest and away from the cities overrun by Urthmen.  Avery and her sister are constantly being hunted. Danger awaits them at every turn. They fear they are the only human beings left, that they are the last of their kind.
But are they truly alone?
Find out in this raw and rousing first installment of the Planet Urth series.
Goodreads Rating: 3.78 with 316 ratings
Genre Listing: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Young Adult, Fantasy
Get the Book: Amazon, Book Depository 

Review:

Edited 12/1/2016
Let me start by saying; I'm surprised I finished this science fiction book. The first half of the book is so incredibly monotonous. Avery has absolutely no personality. I get it she has to survive and care for June, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't have a personality. She hides everything that even resembles an emotion. I was ready to quit by about chapter five but liked the concept so much that I had to give it a chance to get better, and so I kept reading.
About halfway through the book, it did get better, which didn't take long because it's only 284 pages. It is still a little monotonous, but it's not nearly as dry as it is in the beginning. Avery's little sister, June, is wise beyond her years and helps to soften Avery's edges. I really would have liked to see more of June. I think it would have been interesting to get her side of things as well as Avery's.
Some of the wording bothered me as well. Apparently, all of these animals changed because of the chemicals, so they gave them different names.  But the only one to get a different name were boars being changed to boarts. Wolves got evolved into lurkers and prowlers, but other than that it just seemed like it was too much work for the authors to be consistent in changing names. Either keep them the same or don't.
I got annoyed by the love at first sight crap she had going on with Will. I get it; he's the first boy she's ever seen. There are going to be some confusing feelings there. However, I feel like a good chunk of the story ended up being about her trying to figure out her feelings for him, and took away from the survival part of the story. I'm getting burnt out by out of place romances in stories. I just wanted to read a good dystopian story about surviving, and now there's all this foreshadowing of romance. Ugh.
Overall, It was okay. I don't think it lived up to my hopes for the concept. There's apparently 2-3 more books in the series. This one is currently free on Amazon, so for free it's not too bad. I don't know if I'll pay $2.99 for the second book or not. I kind of want to see what happens, but not so much that I need to buy the second book right this second.

Three out of five moons, though I debated giving it two.