Amazon Prime subscribers currently get at least one book free to own each month, sometimes two. I tended to claim but not read them, but they have started to include more novellas and short stories, and that has led me to read outside my usual genres, which I appreciate. One thing immediately obvious to anyone looking at Amazon First Reads is that the books on offer are virtually all by female writers, and aimed at female readers, with female protagonists. One can only assume Amazon follows the data in that respect, which is interesting.
This book fits that pattern, but that’s not to say male readers can’t enjoy it too. I did, to a certain extent. It begins with a scene in September 2009, when our Wisconsinite protagonist was thirteen years old and getting fed up with her doomsday prepper dad. They are building a perimeter fence but Casey would rather be having fun. She’s getting bullied at school by kids who think her dad is weird – and you know what, she thinks he’s weird too. Skip forward to 2025 and Casey is Dr Warner, working in a hospital, and not talking to her dad very often.
Then the apocalypse happens: it always does, if you wait long enough. Patients start biting, she flees the hospital, and for the next six weeks she shelters with her fiance Nate in their apartment. Help never comes, but it gives her time to observe what’s happening in the city. Those bitten either survive, apparently unharmed, or lose their memories, or turn into the ravenous biters. Some survivors are like Casey and Nate, just regular people trying to survive. Others have become burners, out to kill and destroy as if Mad Max were their Emily Post.
When three burners find her hideout, Casey realises it’s time to return to Wisconsin, and her dad, and the safety of the farm she helped to fortify as a teenage girl. What she doesn’t know is that Blake Morrison will be there. Leader of the bullies that tormented her. The boy who ruined her life. Sharing her room. He still has the same evil smirk, but now he’s her dad’s best friend, the farm’s most important protector, and so hot she can’t even look at him without melting into a puddle. Can she get over her anger towards him, even for her dad’s sake? Does she want to?
Despite the gore and the reasonably explicit sex, this book felt like it was pitched at the reading level of younger teenagers, which made for an easy read, even if it felt a bit patronising. Perhaps that reflects how Casey herself seems to be stuck in teenage mode, which becomes aggravating when she refuses to listen to anyone’s safety advice, or learn the rules properly, or pass on information she has, with fatal consequences in some cases – she doesn’t even tell them about the burners. It makes her quite an unlikable lead.
On the other hand, the author writes a good enemies-to-lovers story, and although I am not a regular reader of romance novels, I found Casey’s hatred of Blake and her attraction to him both equally believable, and by the end I was hoping they would find a way to make things work. The book parcels out episodes from their teenage years in a way that smartly creates a degree of tension, since you can’t quite know if rooting for their relationship is at all the right thing to do. A charming supporting cast round the book out nicely. An easy, fun read. Stephen Theaker ***
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