Just Finished Reading Ally Condie's Atlantia

From time to time I like to read "young adult" fiction, although I believe that designation is a misnomer...it's more aimed at teen-agers than adults and used to be called "junior" fiction.  I wonder if some twisted form of political correctness is at work here, with some folks apparently obsessed with the names things are called...even when the new form makes little sense. In any event...call it "junior" or "young adult" fiction as you like...I just finished reading one such book: Ally Condie's 2014 dystopian futurist novel Atlantia...

Atlantia is told in the first person by the protagonist, an orphaned teen-age girl named Rio, who lives with her twin sister Bay in the insulated, underwater city of Atlantia...in the distant future following a world-wide catastrophe (most likely nuclear).  For many years humanity's hopes of survival depended on living deep under the sea, with people periodically sent to the surface in order to supply the needed food and materials to sustain it.  Although going to the Above means sacrificing one's longevity due to the contaminated air, those who choose to do so are held in high regard by those below.  Rio wants to leave Atlantia and live on the surface...and has told this to Bay, who strongly objects.   The obvious reason is that the two would be permanently split apart, since the law dictates that, one, those who go above cannot return and, two, a family member has to be left behind in Atlantia...and Bay is the only one left.  But does Rio's devoted sister have a secret reason for Rio not to leave Atlantia...and what happens when the opportunity comes again for people to choose life on the surface?  Well, there's a lot to Atlantia, and I'd be cheating you out of a good story if I told you much more about what happens.  I will say this much: there is a "wild-card" character in Atlantia: Rio's aunt Maire, whom she suspects of having killed her own mother, who was Atlantia's leader.  But Maire has her own explosive secrets that threaten to tear the social fabric of Atlantia apart...and which increasingly center on Rio herself...

This was a very compelling story, and I loved the different characters.  It may seem a little silly for someone like me at 60 to read this kind of literature, but I don't care...I like stuff of this level like Divergence, The Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter, Series of Unfortunate Events, InnerWorld and Coraline (by Neil Gaiman), Time Quintet, Earthsea, and so on.  There is something about this genre that appeals to me...I guess the inner child is always there with us throughout our lives...