The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Todd is just a few days away from being a man. He's the only boy left in Prentisstown, the youngest one left after the sickness killed all of the women. He lives with two close friends of his mothers, and his beloved dog, and is surrounded by the Noise, the thoughts of all the other men in town. Then he finds something...strange: a girl. And she doesn't have a Noise. Before he can even process what's happening, his guardians are sending him out of town, telling him to run and never come back. As Todd and Viola (and Todd's dog Manchee) start out, they want to know: what are they running from? Where are they running? And what is the secret about Prentisstown that everyone else seems to know?

This book has some amazing cliffhangers, the kind you might find in a serial novel, like something Dickens was writing. In the interest of trying to go to bed earlier, I tried to restrict myself to reading only one section per night, but often, the section ended on such a cliffhanger that I just had to keep reading. Todd and Viola are both such strong characters, Todd especially as he struggles with trying to keep going when everything he's ever known is falling down around him.

Find it at IndieBound.

Read it with:
The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness
Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
Salt by Maurice Gee