Archive for April, 2013

Book Review – Sadie Walker is Stranded by Madeleine Roux

Posted: April 27, 2013 in Book reviews
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Sadie Wlaker is StrandedI downloaded this onto my Kindle as soon as I’d finished Allison Hewitt is trapped. I really enjoyed that book and wanted to read more by the author. Here’s my review – Allison Hewitt is Trapped.

I’ll tell you what, this book didn’t disappoint.

It’s the same zombie apocalypse but with different characters. Sadie isn’t Allison, but she does aspire to Allison’s story. Due to the blog Allison wrote in the fist book, she’s a bit of an underground celebrity. She doesn’t appear in this book though. This is Sadie’s story and about the people around her and the people she meets on her own story.

Sadie’s is in Seattle and it’s several months after the zombie outbreak. Seattle is vaguely functioning and is slowly starting to rebuild itself. Then an infected gets in and all hell breaks loose. Sadie’s and her nephew and friend escape on her friend’s uncle’s boat during the chaos. There’s a mixed bag of characters on the boat. I don’t think I’m giving anything anyway when I say that something (involving zombies of course) happens and they end up getting stranded on an island. I guess the clue is in the title… 🙂

This story ends up also being a bit of a whodunnit mystery as well as a zombie novel. There’s not as much zombie action as most zombie books but the series of events that happens on the island and then trying to unravel what’s happening makes for a very good read.

This is almost a standalone book too and not exactly a sequel to the first book. There is the occasional nod to the first book.

I really enjoyed it. I liked the new characters. All with their own backgrounds and secrets. I liked the way the story unravelled in the whodunnit style too.

I really hope there will be another book in the ‘series’!

Book review – Allison Hewitt is trapped by Madeleine Roux

Posted: April 20, 2013 in Book reviews
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Allison Hewitt is TrappedThis is a cracking book!

It cropped up in my suggested read on Amazon and the title of the book really pulled me in to have a read of the blurb and the reviews. I do love a quirky title!

I normally try and seek out the unpublished authors and quite like a bargain on price. Well this wasn’t on offer or anything but something about it just made me want to grab it. As I said on the opening sentence, it’s a cracking book.

The zombie apocalypse happens and completely ordinary Allison ends up trapped in the bookstore where she works part-time. She’s trapped in the employee break room with her boss, some colleagues and some customers. They have security cameras so can see a little of what’s going on outside. They have some food, but all snacks and pop (soda to American readers).

What Allison does have though is power and an internet connection. To hep keep her sanity she starts to blog. The story is written in a series of blogs, which work really well as chapters. Each blog entry also contains comments from her followers which gives an insight into what is happening around the world and outside the confines of Allison’s break room.

Allison is a brilliant character and you find her starting to take control and being the one the decided to venture out for food. She gels with some of the other characters but some of them are still just colleagues.

If I write much more about the storyline then I’ll start to give spoilers and I really don’t want to do that. There does come a point though where they need to look at moving from the safety, and the confines, of the bookstore. Much of the book focusses on this. It develops really well, especially Allison’s character. Things don;t go smoothly and sometimes the good guys don’t make it…..

Allison, hopefully with her beloved axe, is just the perosn I’d want to be trapped with in a zombie apocalypse!

As soon as I finished it, I looked for other books by the author and found Sadie Walker is Stranded, which I downloaded immediately. I’ve already finished it so a review of that will follow shortly….

Book review – After: the Echo by Scott Nicholson

Posted: April 15, 2013 in Book reviews
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After the Shock: EchoThis book picks up exactly where the last book, After: the Shock finished. That’s always a good start in by view!

In the sequel we catch up with one of the characters from the last book and of course meet a few more.

I said this in my review of the first book, that these aren’t zombies as such, they are zapheads. At the end of the last book there are some observations that the zapheads are starting to change. Much of their initial violent behaviour seems to be leaving and they seem to be banding together and starting to work together. This continues in this book.

There are loads happening with Jorge and Franklin and some of the other characters get themselves into trouble. The zapheads are congregating together in groups and doing some quite od things

The book itself romps through. I couldn’t put it down once I’d started, but I do tend to find that with Scott Nicholson books. They are real action books. It flips between the different groups of characters and keeps you on the edge of wanting to know what happens next.

My only gripe is that the book is way too short. I read it in a day. It felt more like a novella. In fact, it finished at 86% on my Kindle and the rest was other books by the author. I would sooner have waited a little longer for a sequel and had something a bit more meaty! If you regularly read my reviews, then you’ll know this is a pet hate of mine…

Anyway, the story clearly hasn’t finished and you are left with a cliffhanger, so I guess there will be another book out soon.