I am so excited to be hosting the Book Tour of The Ballad Of Ami Miles by Kristy Dallas Alley. Thank you so much to the author and TBR And Beyond Book Tours for giving me a free copy of the book. You can check the tour schedule here.
The Ballad of Ami Miles
Author : Kristy Dallas Alley
Genre : Young Adult Dystopian
Publishing Date : December 1, 2020
Blurb
Raised in isolation at Heavenly Shepherd, her family’s trailer-dealership-turned-survival compound, Ami Miles knows that she was lucky to be born into a place of safety after the old world ended and the chaos began. But when her grandfather arranges a marriage to a cold-eyed stranger, she realizes that her “destiny” as one of the few females capable of still bearing children isn’t something she’s ready to face.
With the help of one of her aunts, she flees the only life she’s ever known, and sets off on a quest to find her long-lost mother (and hopefully a mate of her own choosing). But as she journeys, Ami discovers many new things about the world… and about herself.
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Review
Rating – ⭐⭐⭐.5
The Ballad of Ami Miles is a dystopian young adult novel written from the perspective of Ami Miles. The world is set the future where women most women lose their ability to conceive a child due to a mysterious virus, except a few lucky ones. To keep the human race alive, the government has decided to capture and take these women to a breeding facility to increase the dying population.
Ami’s mother had run away when she was a year old, leaving her with her grandparents, Papa Solomon ad Ruth. She ran to escape the government agents who took away any fertile woman for their breeding program. Ami on turning sixteen was deemed suitable to have a child with a stranger brought by her grandfather. However, she refused to surrender to her fate and ran away to find her mother.
The book, despite its short length, includes a lot of serious issues including homophobia, racial injustice and forced marriage. Ami went through a lot of character development throughout the book. She set out first to find her mother but decided that she will never be happy until she found herself. She went from the oppressed little girl who had no say in her own life, to be an independent girl and I am totally here for it.
However, the world-building could use a bit more work. I think the author could tell us a lot more about the story of how this virus attacked, which lead to a decrease in the human population.
Overall, it was a nice read, and I liked reading about all the important issues that the book touched upon. I would recommend it to someone who likes a good dystopian fiction.
Author
Kristy Dallas Alley is a high school librarian in Memphis, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, four kids, three cats, and an indeterminate number of fish. She studied creative writing at Rhodes College in another lifetime and holds a Master of Science in Instruction and Curriculum Leadership from the University of Memphis. In an ideal world, she would do nothing but sit on a beach and read every single day of her life, but in reality she’s pretty happy reading on her front porch, neglecting the gardens she enthusiastically plants each spring, and cooking huge meals regardless of the number of people around to eat them.The Ballad of Ami Miles is her debut novel.
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