By Kim Flowers. $13.50; Queerteen Press; 185 pages.
Picking up directly after the events in The Divide: Book 1 Uprising, Kim Flowers' YA sequel novel The Divide: Book 2 Unity alternates between protagonists Serenity's and Malaki's points of view as both teens, their families and friends work to bring down the Family Protection Movement and their anti-LGBT agenda.
While the first book only hints at the reasons why LGBT people are walled off into communities separate from "normal" people, in The Divide: Book 2 Unity Flowers uses the characters' love of technology and information gathering to great effect in explaining the reasons behind the Second Civil War ( the books are set about 200 years into the future ) and what happened after that war.
Malaki is captured by the Family Protection Movement and while in captivity she discovers that the movement has an even more sinister agenda than separating LGBT people from the rest of society. This was the most interesting situation in the story that already had a number of twists and turns for Serenity, Malaki and the rest of the members of the Human Equality Movement ( HEO ).
Amidst the fight to bring down the Family Protection Movement Flowers depicts two moving and poignant young adult lesbian love stories. Serenity and Dawn find their way back to each other after a series of misunderstandings, while Malaki and Akasha realize that their lifetime of friendship is blossoming into something more.
Flowers avoids the tropes that plague other lesbian stories with The Divide: Book 2 Unity and instead provides two very satisfying threads that weave throughout Serenity and Malaki's stories: their refusal to back down from a fight and the respect they are given by the adults in the HEO for their STEM ( science, technology, engineering and math ) knowledge.
For readers who are craving a dystopian story featuring intelligent and resourceful lesbian teens who triumph over adversity, I would highly recommend this book as well as the first one in the series.
See www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/The-Divide-Book-1-Uprising/41529.html to read Malic White's review of Flowers' first book in the series, The Divide: Book 1 Uprising.
Note: Flowers is an occasional columnist for Windy City Times.