Let Yourself Be Haunted by Neal Shusterman’s Unwind Dystology

After the Second American Civil War, the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice sides reached a compromise: as an alternative to abortion, parents have the option to get rid of their unwanted children by having them “unwound” (a process that’s equivalent to being harvested for organs), but only between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. The teens’ lives will technically still go on, since 100% of their body parts will be used in transplants, but that doesn’t exactly make the process any more comforting if you’re the one being unwound.

Connor isn’t exactly the best kid around—he’s prone to getting into arguments, and his grades could definitely be better—but it’s still a surprise when he finds the paperwork his parents signed, scheduling his unwinding. Rather than head willingly to his death, Connor decides to go AWOL. As he searches for a safe place to await his eighteenth birthday (when he’ll be officially too old to be unwound), he picks up a few strays. Risa, a ward of the state who’s scheduled for unwinding thanks to budget cuts, is happy to escape her unwanted fate. But Lev, who’s known for his whole life that as his family’s tenth child he’ll be unwound as a “tithe,” wants nothing to do with Connor’s plan to escape; at least, not at first. As they travel from hideout to hideout, two of them eventually ending up at a well-ordered refugee camp called the Graveyard, they start to learn more about the camps for and against unwinding. One thing quickly becomes clear: it’s not enough to escape. It’s time to bring unwinding to a stop.

After the events of Unwind, Connor, Lev, and Risa are left recovering from their near-deaths at the hands of an unwind facility. Over the course of UnWholly and UnSouled, they make it their mission to find out the truth behind Proactive Citizenry, the organization responsible for it all. But with each new discovery, the conspiracy seems to get darker and more dangerous. And with the addition of Cam, a boy made entirely of parts from unwound teens, and Starkey, a militant intent on turning the unwinding process around on the adults responsible for it, it looks like avoiding a third American Civil War may be impossible.

So when UnDivided (the fourth book in the series) opens, the American public is finally choosing sides. With Proactive Citizenry’s big plans to make unwinding old news, an evil organ-hunting bounty hunter determined to harvest Connor and Lev, and a militia of angry teens crashing together, staying whole seems nothing but a fantasy.
Altogether, the Unwind Dystology is creepy and unsettling. Told from every perspective you could ask for, the novels explore the issue of unwinding from all sides, creating a lot of grey area in a conflict that at first seems like it should be black and white. Shusterman excels at writing villains that aren’t just villains—they’re people, and it can be surprisingly difficult to root against them, even when you really, really don’t want them to win. So even though UnDivided wraps up the series fairly neatly, once you’ve read it, there’s no way you’ll be done with the world Shusterman has created. Which, of course, is why I’m so excited for UnBound, a collection of short stories set before, during, and after the other four books of the series.

What’s going to happen in UnBound? I’m not sure, but I’m hoping it’ll clear up some of the loose ends and unanswered questions left after UnDivided. What happened to Connor and his family? To all the rewinds? Is anyone ever actually happy? Because they seriously deserve to be.
Trust me, you’re going to want to let yourself get caught up in this thrilling, haunting series. And don’t worry—if you start now, you can probably finish the first four before UnBound comes out.