The Other Life by Susanne Winnacker
My rating: 3/5 cats
books like this make me appreciate authors like laini taylor so so much.
part of me is concerned that maybe i am being unfair. the book is on scholastic, which makes me think it might be intended for a younger-than-teen audience, in which case, it is probably awesome. but for a contemporary YA audience, or (ahem) someone much much older, it just wasn’t enough.
the premise is great—after a rabies-like disease overtakes LA, sherry and her family take shelter in their bunker at the urging of the military. they are there for 3 years, 1 month, 1 week, and 6 days. get used to the numbers, because sherry will tell you exactly how many seconds it has been since she has felt rain, eaten chocolate, washed her hair with shampoo…
and that is a little irritating, but it’s not a major complaint. i question her ability to know these things with such certainty, but it’s not like i am reading this book for its super-realism.
but so anyway, they run out of food. and of course, they wait until they are down to one final can for three adults and three children before they decide to come up with a plan. which, yeah, actually, now that i am sitting down and writing about it—most of my complaints are about the realism after all.
you can’t just live in a dreamworld. no matter that your radios have stopped working and you haven’t heard any news from the outside world in a year or so, military-assurance-wise, you don’t wait until you have no. more. food. to figure out a solution, and then sit there for two days after the food runs out to finally decide to leave the bunker and see what’s what. you have guns, you have know-how—if her dad was supposed to have been this serious survivalist, would he really have waited that long to take action? leaving the bunker weak from hunger is no way to provide for your family, sir.
so this is just an example of why this book didn’t work for me. there are many others in this vein; convenient instalove, too-easy rescue scenarios, too shallowly-written characters, clumsy exposition,View Spoiler » etc etc.
there isn’t anything wrong with this book, it is just okay. but after just having read Days of Blood & Starlight, this is somewhat of a letdown. again, if this is intended for younger readers, it changes everything. and i understand it is completely unfair to hold it up against laini taylor, who is one of the most skillful writers i have ever read, in the YA world or otherwise, but it is just the way things happened.
this book was kind of a pain in the ass to track down (thank you, bill thompson) so i don’t know if i will ever read the next book in the series. but if it presents itself to me, i will. and i will try not to judge it too harshly.
i feel like i haven’t written much of a review for this book, but again—it is just the way things happened. and i think some of it is the book’s fault.
it’s fine, it just didn’t leave me feeling particularly review-y.
sad.
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