A review by reading_rainy
Mayfly Hollow by Anne Lucy-Shanley

2.0

I really hate to condemn a story, especially when it might be a first novel for this author, but this was laughably bad. I honestly haven’t horrified/laughed this hard in months!

I have to put this part in a spoiler because it could trigger some pain as it deals with a miscarriage. The way it was written was like
Spoiler the Alien movie. This poor woman was losing her baby in the first trimester, so this embryo was TINY. Soooo, the embryo comes out in the toilet, and it has tiny zombie jaws and is ‘chomping’ in the toilet trying to get at someone. The h then flushes the tiny zombie embryo down.
Kudos to the author for writing something shocking authentic.

There were lots of token characters. Even a religious zealot, because you can't have a good apocalypse story without some wacky dude.

The h was a unicorn h, and not in the good way. Everything bad that could possibly happen to a woman, she had lived through.
Spoiler
-Murder suicide of parents when young - check
-Raped and molested as a pre-teen by sister’s disgusting older boyfriend - check
-Older sister addicted to drugs so she has to raise herself and her sister - check
-Used sex with multiple men as a weapon to hide all her inner demons - check
-Small town slut shaming - check


I could go on and on, but I’ll stop. Overall, I appreciate the authors attempt at tackling this genre, but there were simply too many clichés and canned conversations to make this an enjoyable read.