Chuckles Mini Review Catchup

I review everything I read, on my blog and on Goodreads. Most reviews are of a decent length but sometimes you don't have much to say about the book because of its length or you DNFed it or various other reasons. In cases like that it makes sense to write a few mini reviews in one post and clear them out your way! So lets catch up with reviews from earlier this year.

1) Bruno Miller-Breakdown 
Ben Davis was prepared for disaster. He just didn’t know it would come so soon. He and his teenage son, Joel, are miles deep in the backcountry of the San Juan Mountains when high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic detonations light up the pre-dawn sky. Ben, Joel, and their dog, Gunner, must make their way home – or to whatever’s left of it – on foot.

Without the ability to communicate with his ex-wife in Maryland, Ben has no idea if Joel’s brother and sister are okay. The two decide they have no options but to head East. Before their journey begins, they venture into town to check Ben’s outdoor store for supplies and discover one of Joel’s classmates, Allie, alone and in desperate need of help. When Ben realizes Allie’s flight attendant mother is most likely dead and her father lives in Pittsburgh, he knows he has to take her with them. Ben must use the skills he learned as an Army Ranger many years ago to survive the post-apocalyptic world they now live in.

Can he keep himself and two teenagers safe as they navigate the dark and dangerous road ahead?

Ben and his son Joel live on a mountainside overlooking a Colorado town, enjoying camping whenever they can while Ben runs an outdoor supplies shop. They have just started a camping trip when a nuclear attack hits nearby cities and they have to quickly hike home to secure their house and take everything not looted from the store. Joel is anxious about the safety of the girl he is interested and they go to try and find Allie who is trapped in a house on her own with violent looters stripping everything of value in the street. It is also in Ben's mind that he needs to get to Joel's siblings who are living with their mother after the divorce but it is a long dangerous trip to Maryland.

This was a decent first offering in an apocalypse series. It isn't as high octane as some of the books like this that I've read and it doesn't have the same tension level compared to other books. It focuses on Ben who is a prepper and he knows exactly what he is doing when the bombs go off and gets Joel organised for the trip home. The trip back is pretty uneventful though I'd like to have seen more of cowboy Dale in the story as he interested me. Maybe they could have had him and his family joining Ben in some way. The only real action in the book is when they go into the town looking for Allie and more supplies and bump into the looters but even that lacks the tension that I expect in these books. It is not an all action book with death and murder as everyone seems to be in hiding or gone except those looters. It did lack that extra interest and everything seemed a bit too easy for our heroes. I'd have liked to have seen a bit more meat on the bones of the story. If you want a lighter look at the apocalypse, this one might be a good starting point for you but fans of prepper fiction might find it lacking a bit. I'm not sure I'll continue with the series, at least not at the moment though it is a decent enough read.

Read February 2019
3 stars.

2) Amy Cross-The Dog
When Jon takes his dog Harry to a remote cabin for the week, he just wants to get away from the rest of the world. And then one morning, after finding that his phone is dead, Jon looks at the city in the distance and realizes that something seems very wrong. All the power has gone out. At night, the city is completely dark. There are no planes in the sky, and when Jon drives to the nearest gas station, he finds a desolate and bloody scene. He refuses to believe that something truly awful has happened, however, until he spots a figure stumbling through the forest, heading ever closer. A figure that smells of death. 

Soon Jon is facing a desperate fight for survival. While he and his dog have been up at the cabin, the whole world has been struck by a huge, global catastrophe that has left billions dead. Many are dead, but many more have risen again. Can Jon and his dog survive, or are they doomed to suffer the same fate?  

I was interested in the idea of reading about the zombie apocalypse from the POV of the dog. The dog, Harry, is a great character and it was interesting to see him react to what was happening-no buzz from the electrical gadgets to annoy his ears, the smell of blood from the city that Jon can't smell and the ability to recognise danger in the area through all his senses. Oh yes I loved brave and intelligent Harry but boy did I get annoyed and frustrated with the idiot humans around him. 

Jon is frankly an idiot. He is waiting at his retreat for girlfriend Julie when the power goes out. OK I get that not everyone will think apocalypse when the power goes out but Jon is continually wondering aloud when it will come back on. And at least once a page he is telling Harry that Julie will be here in an hour, later that day, coming that night, be here in the morning, be here for lunch, be there before dinner...he goes on and on about when we can expect Julie and it drove me mad! Jon decides to head to a gas station nearby for news and once there, ignores every warning that Harry tries to give about danger, because Jon can't see anything. Yes a zombie appears but Jon is oblivious. Despite the grey skin, the gaping chest wound, maggots on him and stench of decay, Jon thinks the guy trying to eat him needs transport to the hospital and every time he gets into his car, he gets out again to help the guy, while poor Harry goes nuts! When the second zombie's stomach explodes he leaves, still wondering how he could have helped the sick people and whining on about Julie. 

We do finally meet Julie but she is as bad as Jon for stupidity. She stops to help an ungrateful bitch who is rude and aggresive to her and kicks poor Harry! Yet Julie still decides she wants to help the cow! That was it for me with this book! It seems according to reviews on Goodreads that poor Harry continues to be the subject of verbal and physical abuse throughout the book so I'm glad I stopped when I did.

DNF February 2019
2 stars. 

3) Matt Shaw-Voyage To Hell
Letters arrive at random houses and the contents invite the recipients to go on an all-expenses paid cruise - an introductory offer to a new company - but not all is as good as it seems. There's something happening on the posh liner... The people - staff and passengers alike... They're changing...  
I liked the idea of this one-contaminated water turning all the cruise passengers who drink it into psychopaths who want to kill everyone and then themselves. The idea was good but frankly the execution of the story was dreadful. There was no cohesion at all to the story. The timeline is all over the place throughout-introducing each passenger briefly then jumping back to repeat the opening scene and expanding it, going through more passengers, jumping back to cruise invites, jumping forward to a passenger being captured by authorities and interrogated, then back to her story, back to interrogation and back to her story. It just wasn't a flowing story.

I can't honestly say that I liked any of the characters and they weren't exactly smart about accepting a free cruise from guys in suits who just turn up on your doorstep, or a letter through the door telling you to phone this number to claim a free holiday. Seriously? Nothing much happens in the first half of the book because we are just seeing people gradually losing their temper. Later bits of gore are shoved in as we jump about between incidents but I can't say I enjoyed anything about it. It also comes to a sudden end ready to get you to buy the next short segment of 50 pages. I certainly won't be reading on with the other segments in the series and I only finished it because it was very short. 

Read March 2019
1 star.

4) Thomas E Sniegoski-The Demonists
It was supposed to be a simple exorcism, a publicity stunt to firmly establish John and Theodora’s thriving paranormal investigation empire in the public eye. But something went wrong, leading to an on-air massacre that unleashed a malicious host of demons and left Theodora catatonic, possessed by countless spirits.

John sets out on a desperate quest to find a cure for his wife, but his obsession brings him face-to-face with an even more terrifying problem: Theodora’s possession is only one piece of a deadly plot that is threatening the entire world. Because an ancient evil is about to make Earth its battlefield—and without John and Theodora’s intervention, there is no chance for salvation... 

This book was lurking on my shelves for ages and reviews I read didn't make me excited to go ahead and read it. I'm not the biggest fan of ghosts and exorcism stories and I grabbed this when I was reading another series by the author. The two MCs were decent characters and I particularly liked their personal assistant Stephan. The opening with how John and Theo met was interesting as was the actual Halloween show that went wrong but for me the plot then slowed down too much with little of interest happening. We just got John healing, John fixing up a new home, Theo still possessed and then John going off on a trip to Romania to do some research. I just felt that nothing of interest was happening and it was all talk and nothing else. The other characters didn't really interest me. There appeared to be a parade of strangers going into Theo's facility for unknown reasons and little information about their motives or if any are good or bad guys. Even the agent had no personality or appeal. It is by no means a bad book in any way but for my tastes I just found it personally too slow!

DNF March 2019
2 stars.