In the world we’re living in today, we can all relate to the feeling of doom we get from watching the news. We’re surrounded by endless reports of the devastation felt around the world, and then we turn to social media, drowning out the noise with our favorite influencer’s newest vacation vlog. We watch the celebrities, influencers, and even politicians living in luxury, knowing we will never be able to afford any semblance of that lifestyle. We already know this world.

In her debut novel, Orange Island, Vanessa Frances paints a futuristic reality that extrapolates all of this and opens our eyes to these truths we’ve become blind to. Orange Island asks the question that humans come back to time and time again: how do we remain hopeful when the world seems utterly hopeless?

Orange Island is a gripping story that combines climate fiction and techno-dystopia to create a world that is eerily similar to our own. The story takes place in the not-so-distant future year of 2060. The effects of climate change are felt daily as people die or are displaced by extreme heat, storms, or drought. The wealth gap intensifies as commodities like fruit and gas become inaccessible to all except the elite. Technological advancements take hard-working people’s jobs under the guise of helping them, creating an uncanny effect that makes it difficult to separate the artificial from the real.

Our response to these doomsday-type issues has not changed much, either. People seem to have accepted living life in an hourglass as the sand slips away from them all.

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The story centers around Savannah, a young woman who lives with her father as they struggle to survive in Orlando, Florida, and its harsh, oppressive heat. Savannah is haunted by the death of her older sister, Dove, who died when Savannah was young. Dove was a dedicated grad student and researcher, working to develop a drug that could change how humans respond to the increasingly hot temperatures. She had a real desire to change the world and dedicated herself to work that gave her hope for the future of her family. Neither her father nor Savannah can understand what could have ended Dove’s life prematurely.

When Savannah’s father decides to rent out Dove’s room to help them keep up with payments on the house, Savannah finds her late sister’s journal. As she reads through it, searching for anything to help her understand her sister’s death, she becomes enveloped in the conspiracy surrounding the development of this climate resistance drug. Savannah does all she can to understand her sister, who, even in death, seems connected to all that Savannah does.

Orange Island is an incredibly intriguing concept with a gripping plot to match. Frances does such an amazing job at building a world that feels incredibly familiar, even though it is decades in the future. There is a delicate balance between showing the full scope of what the world looks like in this version of 2060, of ensuring we understand how the world got here, while also focusing on the realities of Savannah’s life, her day-to-day struggles, and the story that makes her human, like her childhood memories and her limited, but impactful experiences with the natural-world that makes Florida so unique.

Frances’ deep understanding of humanity shines through in her writing, making it one of the most impactful elements of this story. As much as it is a statement of our many societal flaws, it is also a story of grief and love, about how, when it feels hard to find purpose and joy in life, we choose to live for each other, for those we love and those we’ve lost. We can understand the desperation of each character, what drives them, what they fear, and what they hope for.

This book made me want to sit outside in nature, appreciate all that I have, and pour myself a glass of orange juice to enjoy it while I still can. Even though so much of the devastation highlighted in this story echoes in our current world, Orange Island is a story of hopefulness in a world that feels hopeless. It proves that we must go on, and so we will.

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Image taken from Amazon.