Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

On the changed Louisiana shoreline in the perhaps not so distant future, when the ice caps have melted and weather patterns have changed significantly, Nailer works on Bright Sands Beach breaking down old ships. He's young and still scrawny enough to crawl through ducts collecting copper wire and other scavengable parts of the ship. He's hoping when he gets too big to fit into the ducts he'll be able to work on heavy crew, the teams that take apart the hulls of the ships. He's worried that he won't be strong enough or big enough but he decides not to worry about it.
After a hurricane rushes through the beach, Nailer and his best friend Pima have the day off work while the bosses try to get the beach organized enough to start again, so they decide to go in search of fresh seafood. Out on a spit of land (that becomes an island in high tide) they find a beautiful clipper ship wrecked on the beach. Pima and Nailer go inside the ship and begin to scavenge, thinking this is their ticket out of Bright Sands Beach, just one big Lucky Strike will save them a lifetime of back-breaking work. They just need to find a way to protect it.
While going through the ship, they find the dead bodies of the crew and the body of a swank girl, around their age. With gold rings on her fingers, a diamond in her nose, and gold around her neck, Pima and Nailer know they've hit the jackpot. They decide the best way to get the rings off the girl is to cut her fingers off. Much to their surprise, the girl is awake.
Nita is the daughter of one of the big global shipping agents, and she's being chased by one of her father's employees because Pyce wants to do something illegal. Pyce thinks if he holds Nita hostage, her father will let Pyce do whatever he wants with the company. When Nailer's father (a cruel drug addict) finds Nailer, Pima, and Nita, he decides he's going to make the deal with anyone who comes looking for Nita. Nailer and Nita escape towards the Orleans (the remains of New Orleans, most of which is underwater) searching for one of her father's ships that is still loyal to Nita and her father. When they finally find one, Nailer wants to make sure it's all right (his father has shown up in the city at the same time) but it ends up that Nita's taken.
Nailer finally gets his wish and gets to sail on a clipper ship while they search for the ship that has Nita prisoner. They find it, of course, and Nailer helps with a plan to trap the ship and get Nita back.
There's a lot going on in this book. I had a not so easy time going through the book. I didn't dread reading it but it didn't move quite as fast as other books I've read (like Wither by Lauren DeStefano). It's an adventure story, a dystopia story, has slight political comments, it just felt like a jumble of story lines while being not entirely certain what kind of book it wants to be. I definitely didn't dislike it, but I think if it had not been this year's Printz winner I would have been less inclined to finish it. Ship Breaker is a well-written interesting story, especially if you like adventures. It might appeal a little more to male readers than female readers, but that's not to say female readers won't like it. Definitely an adventurous story. I think my issue with it is that I wasn't expecting it to be an adventure story. But as I said, it's well-written and interesting and should appeal to readers who approach the book without any preconceived ideas of what it's about, other than an adventure.