Book picks similar to
Terra by Gretchen Powell


young-adult
dystopian
science-fiction
sci-fi

Midnight City


J. Barton Mitchell - 2012
    The human adult population is gone, having succumbed to the Tone---a powerful, telepathic super-signal broadcast across the planet that reduces them to a state of complete subservience. But the Tone has one critical flaw. It only affects the population once they reach their early twenties, which means that there is one group left to resist: Children.Holt Hawkins is a bounty hunter, and his current target is Mira Toombs, an infamous treasure seeker with a price on her head. It’s not long before Holt bags his prey, but their instant connection isn’t something he bargained for. Neither is the Assembly ship that crash-lands near them shortly after. Venturing inside, Holt finds a young girl who remembers nothing except her name: Zoey.As the three make their way to the cavernous metropolis of Midnight City, they encounter young freedom fighters, mutants, otherworldly artifacts, pirates, feuding alien armies, and the amazing powers that Zoey is beginning to exhibit. Powers that suggest she, as impossible as it seems, may just be the key to stopping the Assembly once and for all.

Perception


Lee Strauss - 2012
     Zoe’s carefree life takes a traumatic turn when her brother Liam is murdered.The only one who can help her find out what happened is Noah Brody, the last guy on earth she should trust.  Noah Brody is a natural who lives on the outside. He leads protests against the GAPs and detests the widening chasm they’ve created between those who have and those who don’t. He doesn’t like girls like Zoe and he has good reason not to like her specifically. He's not sure why he's agreed to help her, but what he finds out when he does, will change his life forever.PERCEPTION is a near-future mystery that can be read alone. ​

Life As We Knew It


Susan Beth Pfeffer - 2006
    How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.Told in journal entries, this is the heart-pounding story of Miranda’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.

Across the Universe


Beth Revis - 2011
    A spaceship built of secrets and murder. Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet, three hundred years in the future. Never could she have known that her frozen slumber would come to an end fifty years too soon and that she would be thrust into the brave new world of a spaceship that lives by its own rules.Amy quickly realizes that her awakening was no mere computer malfunction. Someone—one of the few thousand inhabitants of the spaceship —tried to kill her. And if Amy doesn't do something soon, her parents will be next.Now Amy must race to unlock Godspeed's hidden secrets. But out of her list of murder suspects, there's only one who matters: Elder, the future leader of the ship and the love she could never have seen coming.

Slated


Teri Terry - 2012
    But echoes of the past whisper in Kyla’s mind. Someone is lying to her, and nothing is as it seems. Who can she trust in her search for the truth?

Tainted


Alexandra Moody - 2014
    All she has ever known are the artificial confines of underground fallout shelter, the ARC. Under the Council’s rule, ruthless officials roam the hallways, community comes first and everyone lives in fear of failing their annual testing. With one simple blood test you could be taken away without any warning or a word of goodbye.There are only a few people in the ARC who Elle truly cares about and she desperately tries to keep them at arm’s length away for fear of losing someone else. Especially, her best friend Sebastian who she denies her feelings for, even from herself. Chilling secrets and mysterious disappearances plague the ARC, but Elle would never dare to voice the forbidden questions that linger on her lips. That is until they take the wrong person.No one is truly safe in the ARC and Elle is about to experience her own personal apocalypse. With nothing left to lose she will risk everything to uncover the truth about the tainted.Will she find what she's looking for or are some secrets better left buried deep underground?Don't miss the first book in this young adult series!

The Park Service


Ryan Winfield - 2012
    That's what fifteen-year-old Aubrey VanHouten learns when he stumbles onto a post-apocalyptic paradise where the few remaining humans live on the run from deadly drones controlled by a mysterious Park Service. Torn between loyalty to his new best friend and trusting the girl of his dreams, Aubrey must learn to survive in a world he never dreamed existed while searching for answers to why everything he was taught is a lie. Beautifully written with challenging moral dilemmas and heart-melting friendships, The Park Service trilogy is an epic coming-of-age-story that will inspire and delight readers young and old.

Landry Park


Bethany Hagen - 2014
    Downton Abbey meets The Selection in this dystopian tale of love and betrayalIn a fragmented future United States ruled by the lavish gentry, seventeen-year-old Madeline Landry dreams of going to the university. Unfortunately, gentry decorum and her domineering father won't allow that. Madeline must marry, like a good Landry woman, and run the family estate. But her world is turned upside down when she discovers the devastating consequences her lifestyle is having on those less fortunate. As Madeline begins to question everything she has ever learned, she finds herself increasingly drawn to handsome, beguiling David Dana. Soon, rumors of war and rebellion start to spread, and Madeline finds herself and David at the center of it all. Ultimately, she must make a choice between duty - her family and the estate she loves dearly - and desire.

Monument 14


Emmy Laybourne - 2012
    She can see it coming down the street. You don't stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don't thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not-you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.Only, if it's the last time you'll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you'd stopped and did those things. Maybe even missed the bus.But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.When Dean raced out the door to catch the school bus, he didn’t realize it would be the last time he’d ever see his mom. After a freak hailstorm sends the bus crashing into a superstore, Dean and a group of students of all ages are left to fend for themselves. They soon realize the hailstorm and the crash are the least of their worries. After seeing a series of environmental and chemical disasters ravage the outside world, they realize they’re trapped inside the store. Unable to communicate with the ones they love, the group attempts to cobble together a new existence. As they struggle to survive, Dean and the others must decide which risk is greater: leaving… or staying. Monument 14 is a post-apocalyptic YA novel that transcends age barriers.

The 5th Wave


Rick Yancey - 2013
    After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother-or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

Glow


Amy Kathleen Ryan - 2011
    Part of the first generation to be successfully conceived in deep space, she and her boyfriend Kieran will be pioneers of New Earth. Waverly knows she must marry young in order to have children who can carry on the mission, and Kieran, the handsome captain-to-be, has everything Waverly could want in a husband. Everyone is sure he’s the best choice. Still, there’s a part of Waverly that wants more from life than marriage, and she is secretly intrigued by the shy, darkly brilliant Seth.Suddenly, Waverly’s dreams are interrupted by the inconceivable – a violent betrayal by the Empyrean's sister ship, the New Horizon. The New Horizon’s leaders are desperate to populate the new planet first, and will do anything to get what they need: young girls. In one pivotal moment, Waverly and Kieran are separated, and find themselves at the helm of dangerous missions, where every move has potentially devastating consequences, and decisions of the heart may lead to disaster.Pulse-pounding and addictive, Glow begins Amy Kathleen Ryan's Sky Chasers--the most riveting series since The Hunger Games.

Kahayatle


Elle Casey - 2012
    My name is Bryn Mathis. I'm seventeen years old, and I live in a neighborhood outside of Orlando, Florida. I’m here alone because my dad died almost a year ago, along with all the other adults in the world. I'm almost out of food, and the gangs of kids that roam around my town are getting more vicious by the day. It's time for me to leave and find another place to live ... a place where I can find food and shelter ... a place where they won't be able to find me. Alone, it might have been possible, but now I've got company. I'm worried that I don't have what it takes to get from here to my final destination, and I have no idea what might be waiting for me when I get there.

True Born


L.E. Sterling - 2016
    The Splicers pay for expensive treatments that might prolong their life. The plague-resistant True Borns are as mysterious as they are feared…And then there’s Lucy Fox and her identical twin sister, Margot. After endless tests, no one wants to reveal what they are.When Margot disappears, a desperate Lucy has no choice but to put her faith in the True Borns, led by the charismatic Nolan Storm and the beautiful but deadly Jared Price. As Lucy and the True Borns set out to rescue her sister, they stumble upon a vast conspiracy stretching from Dominion’s street preachers to shady Russian tycoons. But why target the Fox sisters?As they say in Dominion, it’s in the blood.

Broken Skies


Theresa Kay - 2014
    A disillusioned alien boy. They were never meant to meet…When Jax Mitchell’s twin is kidnapped by Earth's alien settlers, the E'rikon, she'll do anything to get him back—even form an alliance with a teenage E'rikon left behind by the same ship that took her brother.Jax agrees to act as a guide, and in return, the alien agrees to sneak her past the human-proof barrier surrounding the E'rikon city. Too bad it's not that simple. Jax soon finds that she's drawn to the alien boy with bright green hair and jewel-like scales on his back—and he's equally affected by her, the courageous redhead with haunted eyes. But she doesn't know the alien's true motives, and he has no idea that she is much more than she seems.With the aliens and the humans at odds, the connection forming between the two teens has consequences. What started off as a rescue mission sets in motion a chain of events that threatens not only the remaining humans and the growing alien society, but Earth itself.

Renegade


J.A. Souders - 2012
    Selected from hundreds of children for her ideal genes, all her life she’s thought that everything was perfect; her world. Her people. The Law.But when Gavin Hunter, a Surface Dweller, accidentally stumbles into their secluded little world, she’s forced to come to a startling realization: everything she knows is a lie. Her memories have been altered. Her mind and body aren’t under her own control. And the person she knows as Mother is a monster.Together with Gavin she plans her escape, only to learn that her own mind is a ticking time bomb... and Mother has one last secret that will destroy them all.