What kind of awesome did I just read???? 
 This review can also be found at BookShelfery. 
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 I didn't expect to like Not A Drop To Drink by Mindy McGinnis as much as I actually did. It suffered from hyped dystopian in my opinion and I was resistant to reading it since I've been so disappointed by dystopians lately. But I ended up being sucked in and so pleasantly surprised that I had a hard time putting it down and that is a complete win with me! 
 Lynn and her mother lead a pretty desolate life: no electricity, no running water. Just an old farmhouse and a pond of fresh water that they have to sterilize before they can drink it. Every day is spent with the same routine tasks, and rarely do they deviate from them. If they do, it is for another un-fun task like hunting wild game so they have enough meat to make it through the winter. 
 But it's better than dying, amirite?! (Well, some might argue that actually...) 
 Tragedy strikes, though, and Lynn is forced to make a lot of decisions on her own and it is at this point that Not A Drop To Drink gets incredibly interesting. Lynn is not a warm and likeable character and I think that is why I actually liked her. She is brash, overly logical and very literal. She brooks no excuses and doesn't like wasting time or effort. Basically, she is a very concise girl. McGinnis wrote her very well, because even though she was a hard person, she was still a character you wanted to cheer on. 
 And that's why I thought the drifters who wandered in to her life were the perfect counter-balance to her personality. They (especially Eli) began smoothing out all her hard edges. 
 I didn't connect a lot with Eli or Neva, who are major characters in Not A Drop To Drink. I liked them, don't get me wrong, because they added a lot to the story. Maybe it's because I was so heavily invested in Lynn that I didn't care about anyone else. I don't know. Lucy was adorable, although I did find her too wise for five years old. 
 The one thing that bugged me was that we didn't really get much background on what caused the water to disappear. This gets explained in the last third of the book as a sort of history lesson, but at the same time, it felt a little bit convenient and it doesn't address why it happened. Global warming? Random chance? Nobody knows? Well, this reader doesn't know, anyway. 
 Not A Drop To Drink culminates into a fabulous climax that leaves you on the edge of your seat, gripping the pages of your book, mourning the loss of some characters. Authors have hard decisions to make and I'll be honest, I didn't see that one coming. It was right in the feels. 
 It can be read totally as a standalone, which seems to be how it was written, although a second is due to be released in the fall. Not sure if I'll read it because Not A Drop To Drink is pretty close to perfect as it is. 
 Great story.