prettylittlewriter

 Synopsis
‘Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older black couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe.

This was a weird one for me.

There were parts of it that were enjoyable; I liked the mystery and intrigue of what was happening in the world and why these people were suddenly thrown together with no contact with the outside world, but there were also plenty of parts that were incredibly frustrating and that nearly made me DNF.

Within the first few pages of the story, you are given a full page and a half worth of a shopping list that Amanda was buying for their stay in the rented property; WHY? It seemed like the author was just trying to fill the pages to make the book longer, it really had no reason to be like that, a simple sentence saying she’d purchased £200 worth of food was enough.

There were quite a few other moments like this, where either words were repeated (including speech from the characters to each other) or we were given a really indepth description of something that we really didn’t need.

The other thing I really didn’t enjoy was that we didn’t have a resolution or explanation as to what was happening in the world, and why people were getting ill or lost. We were just left with these people were stuck together, end of. WHY WERE THE DEER MIGRATING IN HERDS OF THOUSANDS? WHY WERE PEOPLE’S TEETH FALLING OUT? I WANT TO KNOW!!

If I’m being brutally honest, it all just felt a little pompous and a bit like the author just wanted to use the book to showcase how shit humans really are, especially in the face of crisis.

In actual fact, I can’t really say I enjoyed it at all, because at the end of the story I just felt completely disappointed.

1/5 stars