Lone Star Book Blog Tour: Blue Running by Lori Ann Stephens (review & giveaway)

“You never knew what people were capable of being. Life keeps you on your toes that way.”

Blue Running by Lori Ann Stephens is one wild dystopian race to safety and hopefully to happiness. Fourteen-year-old Bluebonnet “Blue” Andrews is on the run after her friend, Maggie, is shot with Blue’s supposedly empty gun when she picks it up and offers to clean it for her. No one in Blessing in East Texas will ever believe Blue is innocent of killing her only friend, and her police deputy father can never stay sober long enough to help her or do anything but make their miserable lives even worse, every single day. But where will she go when Texas seceded years ago and is a Republic once again? Everyone over a certain age is required to visibly carry a gun, and traveling through the state is incredibly dangerous, and crossing any Texas border is next to impossible. But for Blue, staying in Texas is no longer an option, especially with everyone looking for her and with murderous gangs on the loose. Her desperate plan is to head west, maybe to California, to find her mother, who escaped Texas ten years ago before the border closed and before all flights into, out of, and around Texas were cancelled for good. Even Internet access to the world outside of Texas is highly secured by a firewall.

Blue’s flight from the law is briefly interrupted when she meets sixteen-year-old Jet, who is pregnant and also on the run. These girls quickly become allies and eventually friends as they navigate the Texas pitfalls together, taking a risk-filled, roundabout route toward El Paso, with an interesting and enlightening stop in Austin along the way. In Austin, Jet commissions Blue’s artistic skills to earn money to buy train tickets for the next leg of their journey, but not without some extra hardships thrown their way.

“But being calm is good. Calm people think. Calm people plan.”

Blue Running is quite the dystopian accomplishment, filled with an in-depth plot and solid characterization. While survival on the run is a major theme, friendship is the true heart of the story. Blue and Jet are as opposite as can be, but they rely on each other to weather each storm and to keep moving toward the Texas border, never knowing if they will truly feel safe again. Lori Ann Stephens expertly captures the emotional rollercoaster of living in a world filled with evil and lawlessness but also filled with sympathetic hearts and helping hands.

“There are good people everywhere. They are just harder to find sometimes.”

Texas in Blue Running is an explosive microcosm of some of today’s hot topics, such as rampant crime and illegal immigration (and emigration in this story), but still with a sliver of hope snaking across the rugged terrain and throughout the guarded cities. While suspense and thrilling action are definitely in the air throughout this story, the overall mood is somewhat melancholy, not only because Texas is wrapped in an overly heated dystopian blanket but because the two main characters, who are still so young and scared, are used, victimized, and hunted. That is the true dystopia: children who need and crave a safe and loving home but instead are running for their lives across a hostile land—hungry, tired, and afraid to trust.

Stephens presents a political and societal what-if tale like no other, using startling imagery, violence, intense fear, and some evil and misguided characters to highlight what could happen to our country, our cities, our children, and our very humanity if a seceded state is allowed to run amok and unchecked. At the end of Blue Running, Jet and Blue must make hard choices, experience excruciating loss and pain, and scale a heavily guarded border wall into New Mexico without getting gunned down before they can claim any semblance of victory, hope, and freedom.

Enter the giveaway below on or before May 19, 2023, for a chance to win a signed copy of Blue Running by Lori Ann Stephens.

I received a free copy of this book from Lone Star Book Blog Tours in exchange for my honest review.

Novelist, librettist, lecturer Lori Ann Stephens grew up in North Texas, where she developed an addiction to the arts. Her novels for children and adults include Novalee and the Spider Secret, Some Act of Vision, and Song of the Orange Moons, and her award-winning work has been noted by Glimmer Train Stories, The Chicago Tribune, and the English National Opera. She teaches Writing and Critical Reasoning undergraduate courses, as well as creative writing graduate courses, at Southern Methodist University. She lives in Texas and is a bit mad about her cat.

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