Fantasy and Horror
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Daisy lives happily in a care home with twelve other children, sheltered from a dangerous world of sickness and war. As everything finally returns to normal, she and her friends begin to explore the city beyond the Water Meadows where she has grown up. But while there are exciting new experiences, there are also people who are quick to take advantage of naive teenagers, to exploit them for their own financial gain. They are both cunning and ruthless, and it isn't long before Daisy and her friends find themselves threatened by them.
Not only that, there is something mysterious about Daisy’s friend, Sophie, a comparatively recent arrival to the care home. Why will she never speak about her time before she arrived at Xunzi House? Why, when everyone else seems to be spreading their wings and enjoying their new freedoms, does Sophie seem to withdraw more and more? And why does she seem to be afraid of the world out beyond the Water Meadows? Is she, perhaps, right to be fearful - and if so, what does that mean for Daisy and her friends?
For years the world has been a dangerous place, but at last the country is getting back to normal - or is it?
Here's what readers have to say about this book....
Thank you to NetGalley and Troubadour Publishing Ltd. for the arc of Beyond the Water Meadows. How would the world be different if you had never ventured past your yard? If you knew nobody outside of your household? For Daisy this is her life. After four pandemics and years of lock downs, cultural revolutions, global warming, and the take over of the Chinese as a world power Daisy has never known a world outside Xunzi House, the care home where she lives. Now the world is changing and lock down is over, the children and teenagers are about to discover that there is a whole lot more of the world to explore and there are a lot more dangers in the world than just becoming sick. Allder created a wonderful reimagining of our world if pandemics as well as other social issues continue. There is a lot about the world that could have been explained in deeper detail, and I would love a history book rather than vague notions from our narrator. What I enjoyed about this book is the timeliness and the parts where you could pick out very interesting pieces or little laugh points that have to do with our world today (rainbow pictures in a window of an abandoned house from the "first" pandemic and C-Pop that took me 3/4 of the book to realize was Covid-Pop). What made this book challenging was that it was sometimes told as if it was from Daisy as a 15 year old's perspective but sometime a much older Daisy would interject reminding the reader that it was all a memory. Overall, a well written book that sucked me into the story and despite being slow moving at first the last half of the book flies by.
