I heard good things about this book as a post-apocalyptic novel, but what I got was more of a horror tale with a syrupy dollop of romance at the core.
I haven’t really read many “horror” books, so maybe the choppy writing style is part of the genre. For me it was distracting and trying to lead to often artificial mini-cliffhangers that mimic the jump scares that you see in movies.
The story elements were a little schlocky – I was willing to suspend disbelief when it comes to some really out-there stuff (zombies? aliens?) but this book had stuff I just couldn’t bring myself to buy. Trapped in a nearly abandoned mansion with a hunky guy in a snowstorm and your priority is planting seeds for a future food crop in two weeks? Amnesia causing you to forget the first chapter of the book? These were tough to swallow.
But it was also a book with a unique story that I don’t run into very often, and I liked that there are lots of mysteries in here that aren’t necessarily solved. There is an inherent promise for more answers in the rest of the series, but I think those answers probably aren’t worth the reading time for me.
Next I am reading Bye, Bye Baby by Ace Atkins – his last book writing for the Spenser series.
