HaBO: Childhood Friend is Now a Post-Apocalyptic Government Soldier

This HaBO was sent to us by Gabby, who is looking for this young adult, possibly post-apocalyptic, novel. CW/TW for the description below:

This book haunts me at night.

I read it pre-2015 and I believe it was fairly recent when I read it (likely published around the Hunger Games/Divergent era). It was a YA novel that involved heavy military/government control of society and possibly a post apocalyptic scenario.

The heroine is detained by the government (can’t remember if she did anything or if it was just her family or something). She is to be taken to some kind of government facility. The solider transporting her is a childhood friend she hasn’t seen in a very long time. He doesn’t acknowledge their history. There is lots of tension surrounding this car ride. Only the military can use roads.

I think he shows a couple of small kindness acts, like letting her sit in the front not trapped in the back. At some point he starts to take a weird route, before revealing to the heroine that he has been in love with her the whole time and asks her to runaway with him. She agrees and they do.

If I remember right, there’s also a very strange scene that involves them coming across a house where a woman is living outside of the government. She is crazy and insists they had no choice but to kill “him” and eat him, it is heavily implied this is a child but revealed to be a pet dog. I’m pretty sure this scene was from this book and for some reason it has stuck with me.

I definitely want to read this one.