And for the love of Jesus don’t force kids to read this one. The author is obviously very talented to have sparked these emotions that still unsettle me to this day, but maybe wait till your kids/ you are at least 16 to read this one. A deep take on mental health and psychological horror/thriller. From what I remember the story isn’t bad perse but just really dark. But it was enough for 11 year old me to forever hate this book and start me in therapy young lol. In the end it’s revealed that the dad is a nut job and they don’t actually eat the babies.

Spoilers to follow, this book subjects HEAVILY around a wife being forced to birth children just so her older children can eat them because the dad poisoned the cows. I am now 21 and this book still gives me nightmares. I was forced to read this BY MYSELF for school when I was 11 not even in group read.

“Suspenseful and riveting, this debut novel raises serious issues about what it means to survive.I was scrolling through my read on audible and this monstrosity came up and let me tell you this book has followed me. Combining elements of Margaret Peterson Haddixs Running Out of Time (1995) and Kazuo Ishiguros Never Let Me Go (2005), published for adults, this post-apocalyptic thriller will also pique the interest of Nancy Werlin and L.J. “Debut novelist Bodeen effectively builds the claustrophobic suspense with each chapter as readers slowly discover the Compound is not the refuge it seems. Rex examined the grain in his laboratory and found rat poison in the. After seven months the animals stopped touching their food. Initially, there had cows and chickens that provided milk, meal, and eggs. The audience will feel the pressure closing in on them as they, like the characters, race through hairpin turns in the plot toward a breathless climax.” -Publishers Weekly, starred review After waking, he remembers the history of their food in the Compound. As far-fetched as the premise may be, Bodeen keeps Eli's actions true to life and uses clues planted fairly and in plain sight. Repulsed and already suspicious, Eli begins investigating his father's claims, and sets up a family death match against a man who grows increasingly irrational and sinister but no less powerful. With nine years to go before the air outside will be safe to breathe again, the food supply shows signs of running out, but Eli's father has a solution-provided they jettison all morals and ethics. Eli, the 15-year-old son of a billionaire techno-preneur, has spent the last six years with his family in the massive underground shelter his father has built, knowing that nuclear war has destroyed the world he knows-and killed his grandmother and his twin brother, who couldn't reach the compound in time. “Bodeen, acclaimed as the writer of such picture books as Elizabeti's Doll, turns out a high-wire act of a first novel, a thriller that exerts an ever-tighter grip on readers.

The Compound by S.A. Bodeen