Blurb:

Jamal Lawson just wanted to be a part of something. As an aspiring journalist, he packs up his camera and heads to Baltimore to document a rally protesting police brutality after another Black man is murdered.

But before it even really begins, the city implements a new safety protocol…the Dome. The Dome surrounds the city, forcing those within to subscribe to a total militarized shutdown. No one can get in, and no one can get out.

Alone in a strange place, Jamal doesn’t know where to turn…until he meets hacker Marco, who knows more than he lets on, and Catherine, an AWOL basic-training-graduate, whose parents helped build the initial plans for the Dome.

As unrest inside of Baltimore grows throughout the days-long lockdown, Marco, Catherine, and Jamal take the fight directly to the chief of police. But the city is corrupt from the inside out, and it’s going to take everything they have to survive.

I received a digital advanced readers copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Survive the Dome feels like a breathing manifestation of the emotions felt in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020. Rage, frustration, anxiety, and pain simmer across the story, held together by a fierce hope in which a queer Black boy saves the city. The story follows Jamal, a Black queer teen journalist who attends a Black Lives Matter protest – against the wishes of his mother – but gets trapped in the city when a large technological dome forms around Baltimore proper. With nowhere to go, Jamal crosses paths with Marco, a mysterious Latino teen hacker, Jamal becomes intertwined with the resistance inside – and becomes instrumental to the fight against corruption and abuse of power.

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