greerd's review
3.0
[b:Come Lucky April|2148588|Come Lucky April (Plague 99, #2)|Jean Ure|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1194457187s/2148588.jpg|345222] was one of the first post-apocalyptic novels I ever read as a child and it started a love affair - but I never found the prequel. Now, as an adult with a job and access to secondhand books on the internet, I found it!
And it's... ok. Kid-me would have enjoyed it a lot more. The setup feels a bit cliched now: Fran comes back from a wilderness camp and finds (almost) everyone has succumbed to a flu-like plague. Her best friend Harriet has basically had a psychotic break and is super-annoying and useless ( but I actually liked that, in the sense that uber-competent teenagers can stretch belief in some books). They also meet a classmate, Shahid, who for all his criticism of Harriet is probably also not coping with the situation in the best possible way ( watching TV all day until the broadcast cuts out, while his father dies slowly in the next room and the bodies of the rest of his family rot in another bedroom ).
The setting is very British, and there's some monologing about the power of the government and secret conspiracies. Nothing much happens to the three of them - there's no gang violence or close-up death or mad cults. They don't really struggle to find food or water. (There is a mention of Fran having to scavenge some tampons - yay for authors who address the Period Problem). And there's not a satisfying conclusion, just the decision to keep going and keep living for as long as they can.
Which is a bit like regular life, really.
And it's... ok. Kid-me would have enjoyed it a lot more. The setup feels a bit cliched now: Fran comes back from a wilderness camp and finds (almost) everyone has succumbed to a flu-like plague. Her best friend Harriet has basically had a psychotic break and is super-annoying and useless ( but I actually liked that, in the sense that uber-competent teenagers can stretch belief in some books). They also meet a classmate, Shahid, who for all his criticism of Harriet is probably also not coping with the situation in the best possible way (
The setting is very British, and there's some monologing about the power of the government and secret conspiracies. Nothing much happens to the three of them - there's no gang violence or close-up death or mad cults. They don't really struggle to find food or water. (There is a mention of Fran having to scavenge some tampons - yay for authors who address the Period Problem). And there's not a satisfying conclusion, just the decision to keep going and keep living for as long as they can.
Which is a bit like regular life, really.
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