Without trying to give too many major spoilers, the story follows Retta and Jasper as they struggle to survive in the apocalyptic world. They start out in a community of people who have rather banded together in order to survive. They then try to make their way to Washington, in order to go to Canada, where they hope to live normal lives.
The plot is interesting enough and I could have really enjoyed it, had it not been for several issues. Firstly, there were typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors throughout the work. Also, the book was riddled with inconsistencies. For example, a character is diagnosed with an illness “the day before”, but then paragraphs later we read about what has been happening “since he was diagnosed.” There’s also the unfortunate mishap of the wrong name being used for a character. Another problem was how a pregnancy unfolded in the story. The young woman isn’t sure if she’s pregnant, but also states that it would have happened ten weeks ago. There is no mention, nor question by other characters, of a missed period during that time, when surely that would have occurred at least once. This is off-putting; it makes it seems like the author didn’t care enough to thoroughly research, but rather expected readers to just go along with it.
My main issue was the use of rape in the story. The main female character is raped on a regular basis for a time, and yet other than having a hatred for the man who did it, she does not seem to be affected by it. Handling this in such a fashion is inappropriate, inconsiderate, and potentially hurtful to those who have actually endured this tragedy. There is no need for it to take place - the only consequence this put in motion could have easily been written in a different, less offensive way. As it is, the rape is present in the story, and has no other point than to create extra drama.
The ending is, in my humble opinion, an interesting and fitting one for a thriller, but the rest of the book took away from my appreciation of it. Unfortunate really. If this book was both developmentally edited and given a copy edit, it could be vastly improved and even be a great read.