Book Review: The McClane Apocalypse by Kate Morris

Reagan McClane is a prodigy med school student on the brink of a brilliant career, but the United States and the rest of the world are headed towards total economic and social collapse. And it doesn’t take more than a few hours for mass crime, looting and pillaging to spread across the country like a plague. A brutal attack at her university leads to a fight for her life before Reagan barely makes it home to the safety of her awaiting grandparents and sisters on their family farm in Tennessee.

Three sexy Army Rangers, one of whom is married to Reagan’s eldest sister, will join the McClane family to build their farm into an impenetrable fortress that they will fight to keep, no matter the cost. Reagan will find that defending her hardened, scarred heart against ever letting anyone in again will prove even more difficult than survival as one Ranger in particular tries to invade it.

The McClane Apocalypse is a story of love, survival and the importance of family during the worst of times imaginable. 

My Review:
I ignored the references to sexy Army Rangers as the apocalypse scenario always interests me but I should have listened to myself over the romance element. Three sisters and three Rangers and it seemed obvious from the start how they were going to pair up. Putting that annoyance aside, as the blurb does warn about the romance, my real issue was with the characters, in particular, Reagan, and the plot. 

Let me start with the actual disaster itself which was beyond belief for me. North Korea tries to attack South Korea and China and accidently bombs itself before a missile hits each target. Other than China just sitting around watching it happen, ok I can go with this. The UN tells the UK to attack North Korea and Iran which it does without question and decides to just attack Russia too. Yeah right! The UK is not just going to go and do that and the UN are notorious for inaction anyway, never mind the countless meetings and the veto issues that would arise! Then Russia retaliates by attacking UK and France. Here's the good bit-a lot of the missiles miss their land targets and hit the water, causing tsunamis that flood China, UK, France, Russia and the US. Um, yeah. And in spite of this world war, everyone is still going to classes at university and thinking about their future careers...  

Reagan, her friend and teacher decide they need to flee. They are to grab any food they find and pack a few essentials. This should be done with haste and instead, they arrange to meet in four hours by which time two are dead. How does it take four hours to pack clothes into a bag and break into a couple of vending machines? Not exactly in a rush eh? Of course the rapists and junkies have attacked the campus but luckily Reagan is pre-med and stitches up her various stab wounds and makes her escape at her leisure, driving miles to her family farm in the dark. Luckily she only collapses after finishing her journey. How convenient! 

From that moment on Reagan becomes a complete cow. She knows her grandmother hates swearing, so she swears all the time. She is rude, sulky, whiny and shouts, screams and yells at poor John constantly. What the hell he sees in her is beyond me and there is no chemistry at all in the relationship, just her behaving badly and getting away with it. She is a total bitch and I completely hated her. Even when she is donating blood to an injured man, it is another excuse to yell and sulk and I got very tired of her childishness. She has a dreadful manner in dealing with people for someone who wants to be a doctor.

To be honest there is nothing about the book that I can recommend. The plot was beyond all realism and had me rolling my eyes from the first page. When the boy runs into the class to say the US has been attacked, the teacher starts an in depth discussion explaining the downfall of society instead of the three of them getting the heck out of there! It was just an inappropriate place for an info dump. The dialogue is very clunky and not the way that people speak for the most part. It is far too wordy and trying to be clever. The writing was strange and it lacked cohesion and a natural flow. It was also pretty dull. We get a lot of inane details about things like making breakfast but get nothing about the dangerous trip home with Reagan. Nothing of any interest is really happening until we follow the Rangers and even that is ruined by Reagan having a meltdown. I just didn't enjoy anything much about this and quickly DNFed it.

Read April 2019.
DNF 1 star.