J.W. LYNNE
AUTHOR OF BESTSELLING NOVELS WITH TWISTS, TURNS, AND SURPRISES
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Want to go on a blind date ... with a dystopian book?


Are you looking for a good dystopian book to read? Are you tired of reading random reviews and unhelpful suggestions on lists with titles like "What to read after The Hunger Games" or "Books similar to the Shatter Me series" or "If you liked Divergent, try this"? Are you looking for a book that YOU can't put down?

Have you ever considered going on a blind date with a great ... dystopian novel?

Below are the first few sentences (generally the first paragraph or so) of amazing dystopian fiction novels that appeal to teens, young adults, and adults. All of these exciting novels feature thrilling adventures of great characters who live in a dystopia (often a post-apocalyptic society). Some are mysteries, some sci-fi (science fiction), some technothrillers. Most include at least a touch of romance. The books below range from chart-topping best sellers and popular works of literature from New York Times or USA Today best-selling authors to hot new indie releases that have reached the top 100, top 10, and even #1 spot on Amazon's best seller lists. They all make great gifts!

If you like the excerpts you read below, click "Reveal my date!" and you'll be magically transported to Amazon where you'll be able to learn more about your potential "date" (book). You can either turn it down (no hard feelings) or give it a chance (wouldn't that be fun!). Be sure to come back here and tell us what you thought of your date!

P.S. If you're a member of Amazon's Kindle Unlimited, the top 10 books below are FREE to read!

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Meet your potential dates ...
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but only finding the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

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Our teacher, Professor Adam, doesn’t know we’re just going through the motions. He doesn’t understand that nothing he’s saying really matters anymore. This classroom, and everything that happens inside it, once seemed big and important. Now it all seems silly and insignificant. I try to pay attention, because we’re supposed to, but my mind can’t focus on the present. It’s too busy thinking about the future. A future where every life in this room is in jeopardy.

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When we got the letter in the post, my mother was ecstatic. She had already decided that all our problems were solved, gone forever. The big hitch in her brilliant plan was me.

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I want to scream. I want to fling myself down and beat my hands against the
ground. This isn’t how things were supposed to be. This isn’t how this
story was supposed to end.

It feels like a lifetime ago that my family and I embarked on our simulated mission. I wish I'd known what would happen next. I wish I could go back in time and grab my family and run far away ... all the way to the moon. But, of course, that's impossible.

And now it's too late to run.

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I barely notice the dark stream of blood trickling from my wrist to my fingertips. My pulse throbs in my temples, my breath coming in short, frenzied bursts. I focus my eyes ahead, trying to see through the veil of darkness.

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Screams. Screams. Everywhere. Everyone is scared. But I don’t know who “everyone” is. Their voices sound young, so I guess they’re kids, like me. I don’t hear any older voices. So either the grownups aren’t scared, or there aren’t any grownups with us anymore.

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The screw through Cinder’s ankle had rusted, the engraved cross marks worn to a mangled circle. Her knuckles ached from forcing the screwdriver into the joint as she struggled to loosen the screw one gritting twist after another. By the time it was extracted far enough for her to wrench free with her prosthetic steel hand, the hairline threads had been stripped clean.

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When the White Noise went off, we were in the garden, pulling weeds. I always reacted badly to it. It didn’t matter if I was outside, eating in the Mess Hall, or locked in my cabin. When it came, the shrieking tones blew up like a pipe bomb between my ears.

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No one speaks of the grace year.

It is forbidden.

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IT WAS ALMOST December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice. He had seen it both times. Squinting toward the sky, he had seen the sleek jet, almost a blur at its high speed, go past, and a second later heard the blast of sound that followed. Then one more time, a moment later, from the opposite direction, the same plane.

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Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest.

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THERE IS ONE mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.

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The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.

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ALIENS ARE STUPID.

I’m not talking about real aliens. The Others aren’t stupid. The Others are so far ahead of us, it’s like comparing the dumbest human to the smartest dog. No contest.

No, I’m talking about the aliens inside our own heads.

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He began his new life standing up, surrounded by cold darkness and stale, dusty air.

Metal ground against metal; a lurching shudder shook the floor beneath him. He fell down at the sudden movement and shuffled backward on his hands and feet, drops of sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool air. His back struck a hard metal wall; he slid along it until he hit the corner of the room. Sinking to the floor, he pulled his legs up tight against his body, hoping his eyes would soon adjust to the darkness.

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Now that I’ve found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night? My wings aren’t white or feathered; they’re green, made of green silk, which shudders in the wind and bends when I move—first in a circle, then in a line, finally in a shape of my own invention. The black behind me doesn’t worry me; neither do the stars ahead.

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MY MOTHER THINKS I’M DEAD. Obviously I’m not dead, but it’s safer for her to think so.

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The scythe arrived late on a cold November afternoon. Citra was at the dining room table, slaving over a particularly difficult algebra problem, shuffling variables, unable to solve for X or Y, when this new and far more pernicious variable entered her life's equation.

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I’ve been locked up for 264 days. I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company. 1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet I haven’t spoken in 264 days of isolation. 6,336 hours since I’ve touched another human being.

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The door slid open, and Clarke knew it was time to die.

Her eyes locked on the guard's boots, and she braced for the rush of fear, the flood of desperate panic. But as She rose up unto her elbow, peeling her shirt from the sweat-soaked cot, all she felt was relief.

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“There are places you can go,” Ariana tells him, “and a guy as smart as you has a decent chance of surviving to eighteen.”

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 Only fools climbed to the surface. It was stupid to put yourself in danger like that, my mother always said. Not only were there near-constant debris showers from the rubble belt, but you never knew when the Krell would attack. Of course, my father traveled to the surface basically every day—he had to, as a pilot. I supposed by my mother’s definition that made him extra foolish, but I always considered him extra brave.

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It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure. Everyone else in my family has had the procedure already. My older sister, Rachel, has been disease free for nine years now. She’s been safe from love for so long, she says she can’t even remember its symptoms. I’m scheduled to have my procedure in exactly ninety-five days, on September 3. My birthday.

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Young adult dystopian books and authors on this page include: Legend, Marie Lu, Scythe, Neal Shusterman, Shatter Me, Tahereh Mafi, Matched, Ally Condie, Above the Sky, Maze Runner, James Dashner, The 5th Wave, Rick Yancey, Delirium, Lauren Oliver, Uglies, Scott Westerfeld, Ready Player One, Ernest Cline, Divergent, Veronica Roth, The Darkness Outside, J.W. Lynne, The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, The Unknown, The Giver, Lois Lowry, The Cure, K.A. Riley, The Selection, Kiera Cass, The Grace Year, Kim Liggett, Skyward, Brandon Sanderson, The 100, Kass Morgan, The Darkest Minds, Alexandra Bracken, Unwind, Neal Shusterman, Cinder, Marissa Meyer