The Key to Fear

by Kristin Cast

Overview

No touching today for a healthy tomorrow.

For fifty years, the Key Corporation has defended humanity against a deadly virus that spreads through touch. Lovers don’t kiss, or even hold hands. Personal boundaries are valued above all. Break the laws, and you’ll face execution.

Elodie, a talented young nurse, believes in the mission of the Key and has never questioned the laws that control her life. But Elodie is forced to break the rules when she sets out in search of a terminal patient who goes missing while under her care.

From the outside, it seems like Aiden was given everything he could want from the Key—a purpose, an education, and a future. But Aiden knows more than he’s letting on, and the dark secrets he’s keeping could tear the Key’s strict society apart.

When Elodie and Aiden’s lives collide, the fallout will be devastating. What do you do when the brutal system that once kept you safe hunts you down?

Run.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982548032
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	10/13/2020
Series:	Key Series , #1
Pages:	311
Sales rank:	452,938
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.70(h) x 1.40(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Kristin Cast is a #1 New York Times and #1 USA Today bestselling author who was born in Japan and grew up in Oklahoma where she explored everything from tattoo modeling to broadcast journalism. After battling addiction, Kristin made her way to the Pacific Northwest and landed in Portland. She rediscovered her passion for storytelling in the stacks at dusty bookstores and in rickety chairs in old coffeehouses. For as long as Kristin can remember, she’s been telling stories. Thankfully, she’s been writing them down since 2005.

Editorial Reviews

09/14/2020

In this propulsive series starter, Cast (The Dysasters) imagines a corporation-controlled post-pandemic world in which human touch is highly regulated (“No touching today for a healthy tomorrow”). Fifty years after the deadly virus Cerberus claimed untold billions, 17-year-old Elodie Benavidez excels at her Key Corp-assigned nursing career and has been matched with—and affianced to—Rhett Owens, a young man with solid career prospects. But something is missing for Elodie, who prefers bathing in water instead of light, as is common, and spends her free time reading banned novels. When a young patient goes missing from her ward and she meets 17-year-old Aiden, a seemingly directionless young man with dirty boots that stand out in her strictly sanitized milieu, Elodie realizes that things are not as perfect as the Key Corp claims; she must decide whether the bubble in which she lives is enough. Though Cast aptly portrays a sense of unease among people living heavily governed lives, broad-strokes worldbuilding fails to result in deeply developed characters or a robust world. Ages 12–up. Agent: Steven Salpeter, Curtis Brown. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2020-07-27
“No touching today for a healthy tomorrow.”

After a deadly pandemic wiped out most of the world’s population 50 years ago, the Key Corp has emerged as humanity’s savior by creating shielding technology, imposing laws against touching, and controlling every aspect of life, from matching teens with significant others to assigning their careers paths from a very young age. Elodie is a nurse matched to a fiance she is not too sure about, but since questioning the Key is unheard of, she complies. Aiden is a rebel with a secret, changing career paths frequently until he is threatened with Rehabilitation and ends up working at the morgue. When Elodie and Aiden meet, everything changes, and Elodie starts to question everything she has been told. First in a new series, the novel fails to impart the fear necessary for its worldbuilding to work, between its risible villains, a too-easy-to-infiltrate evil corporation, and a sketchily developed connection between the main characters. The rules imposed by the Key Corp crumble under scrutiny, and the public’s overall conformity and compliance with them seem utterly implausible: Touching and sex are illegal and harshly punished, yet teenagers are still matched, married off, and expected to live together and start families (though babies are grown in laboratories). Elodie and Aiden are both brown-skinned.

Despite its topical pandemic plot, the novel brings nothing new to the genre. (Science fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews