Review: Signs of Life: A Post-Apocalyptic Pandemic Survival Thriller

Signs of Life: A Post-Apocalyptic Pandemic Survival Thriller by L.L. Akers
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

::SPOILER—I HATED THIS:: If you’re looking for anything positive, it’s time to turn around and go home. In fact, I am, for the first time in a very LONG time, having trouble finding the words to describe this….story. Forget the post apocalyptic genre completely, and instead imagine some Frankensteinesque mash up of Lassie and Pee Wee’s Great Adventure cast with only dogs. Ok, so there is an apocalyptic bent here, as Ebola makes a come back, and an imported Ebola vaccine turns perfectly acceptable humans into Walking Dead extras. I believe the entire Ebola-sickness ruse was, however, created solely to function as a vehicle through which this author was able to deliver the story of one plucky little mutt named Moses, who made a selfless journey fraught with flesh eating, blood, gore and death—all for the love of a human. (And if you think that last sentence was bad, you might want to skip this entire book). Canines in the story converse in complete sentences with not only each other, but diva house cats, owls and squirrels that are apparently afflicted with ADHD, while the humans, through the use of sign language and inane conversation fuck up everything one chapter at a time.

I keep diving into these indie authors hoping for gold and finding….well, NOT gold. As much as I love this genre, there is more dross here than in any other except perhaps soft porn disguised as romance novels. I. JUST. CAN’T.

View all my reviews

Review: Stay Awake

Stay Awake by Megan Goldin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

Review

Megan Goldin’s Stay Awake is a suspense-filled, well-written mystery with some structural challenges that unfortunately weaken the integrity of the novel—a flaw that pulled me from the book again and again, and often just when I was finally completely immersed. Goldin introduces the reader to the main character, Liv: a woman with a debilitating ailment. When Liv falls asleep, with her consciousness goes her memory. As a result, her angst-filled waking hours are laden with confusion, frustration and fear. One moment she is a successful writer for a vogue magazine; the next she is alone, living a life that is almost recreated daily, a murder suspect with no clear knowledge of the truth. To support Liv, Goldin has created friends, social workers, love-interests and colleagues, each of whom knows only a small portion of Liv’s full reality. The exception is Ted, an intimate partner whose drive to protect Liv is both noble and romantic. While the range of individual differentiation is admirable, each character is considerably underdeveloped with just not enough detail or background to make them come alive. For this reader, although the plot was brilliant, the characters remained flat on the page, never fully engaging me in their experiences. The second point of contention here was Goldin’s choice of structure. The timeline is all over the place, moving from past to present in both years and hours. It’s disconcerting and confusing, which, while a reflection of Liv’s mindset, caused me to have to continually flip back and forth to reread chapter headings in order to ascertain date and time. What I will give Goldin credit for is her incredible ability to build tension in her writing. In this, she is positively brilliant. One scene in the story takes Liv to an “art exhibition” that is so macabre in its presentation that it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The level of detail and the choice of which details were chosen to share relative to the exhibit were nothing short of genius, and, in my opinion, the strengths of the book as a whole. Add to these a psychological element that will definitely have a physical effect on the reader, and the result is a roller coaster ride in the dark. Overall, I did inhale the pages and revel in the mood and tone Goldin so skillfully wrote into being. For that reason alone, this rates a solid 3. I anxiously await her next story! I would like to thank St. Martin’s Press and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC. This is slated for publication on August 9, 2022. (l