Review:
This was an interesting book. It was a little different than most dystopian/apocalyptic books I have read as the story starts the night of the disaster and continues through the first year rather than your typical dystopian which is set decades after the disaster.
There were many interesting and realistic scenarios that the characters have to deal with, such as disposing of dead bodies, acquiring food and water, and dealing with limited fuel and resources.
Most of the first part of the book has the characters dealing with these things as well as deaths as people reach puberty, there wasn’t much in the way of long term plot early on, other than listening for updates from the CDC on how they are trying to find a cure.
The last third of the book was more exciting as two of the characters leave the relative safety of their island in hopes of finding the promised cure.
The characters were good but not great, I didn’t find their personalities diverse enough and I would sometimes have to double check who someone was because they blurred together.
It was nice that there wasn’t any bad language and the violence was fairly mild, making the book suitable for younger readers (perhaps ten and older).
It did feel that a lot of scenes were too brief and could have been expanded to make them more interesting and give a better connection to the characters. I would have enjoyed seeing more details on exactly how they were running things, managed their resources, taught things to the younger children, worked on cleaning the water, searching the homes etc. most of this was only described briefly and it would have been so much more enjoyable if these world details were expanded.
There were quite a few times were the science or real world happenings were inaccurate or didn’t seem likely and occurred only for the convenience of the story.
Overall I would rate this book 3 ½ stars, as it has some interesting topics and ideas but I just wish they were expanded more. The characters were fairly good but too similar to each other to be anything special
In full disclosure I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway.
Rating: ***
