A review by readingwithana
After the End by Bonnie Dee
2.0
(Review thanks to a free digital ARC from NetGalley)
Ari and Lila are on a subway in New York City going their separate ways, following different paths of life. Suddenly, the subway makes an abrupt stop and nobody knows what is going on. Then, they hear people screaming and soon see people scrambling to run for safety. Before long, they realize that humans have become zombies and are searching for their next meal. Ari and Lila's intertwine, among with other survivors of the subway, and together, they try to survive this zombie invasion and search for a safe place.
This book was certainly nothing new. It is pretty common to have post-apocolyptic novels that involve zombies and people banding together in order to survive. Pretty generic story line; it does not bring anything new to the table. It is something that other authors have tried before and in some ways. the outcome is pretty predictable.
The characters were fine. They provided what they could given the story line. Ari and Lila are definitely characters that I did not enjoy reading about. Ari is the macho-type guy who is automatically put in charge because he exemplifies leadership skills. It also helps that at the time of the crisis, he was in his army uniform. But he tries again and again to be not considered the leader; he would much rather have someone else do it. Lila, on the other hand, was a very bland character to me. She was portrayed as begin a deep person, but I did not see that. Bring these two characters together and all we get is this sexual tension and attraction that takes over and that is all you read about when they are being chased away by zombies. I would much rather have had this story told from a different character's perspective, especially since it changes from Ari and Lila every chapter.
Because of all the flirting that goes on between Ari and Lila, we don't really get some kind of backstory as to what may have caused people to transform into zombies. We are given a vague indication of it but not much expansion on the theory. That could also be because the story is rather short but I feel it is an element that would have have been nice to expand on.
Overall, this felt more like a romance novel with a mix of zombies rather than a post-apocolyptic zombie novel with a sprinkle of romance.
Ari and Lila are on a subway in New York City going their separate ways, following different paths of life. Suddenly, the subway makes an abrupt stop and nobody knows what is going on. Then, they hear people screaming and soon see people scrambling to run for safety. Before long, they realize that humans have become zombies and are searching for their next meal. Ari and Lila's intertwine, among with other survivors of the subway, and together, they try to survive this zombie invasion and search for a safe place.
This book was certainly nothing new. It is pretty common to have post-apocolyptic novels that involve zombies and people banding together in order to survive. Pretty generic story line; it does not bring anything new to the table. It is something that other authors have tried before and in some ways. the outcome is pretty predictable.
The characters were fine. They provided what they could given the story line. Ari and Lila are definitely characters that I did not enjoy reading about. Ari is the macho-type guy who is automatically put in charge because he exemplifies leadership skills. It also helps that at the time of the crisis, he was in his army uniform. But he tries again and again to be not considered the leader; he would much rather have someone else do it. Lila, on the other hand, was a very bland character to me. She was portrayed as begin a deep person, but I did not see that. Bring these two characters together and all we get is this sexual tension and attraction that takes over and that is all you read about when they are being chased away by zombies. I would much rather have had this story told from a different character's perspective, especially since it changes from Ari and Lila every chapter.
Because of all the flirting that goes on between Ari and Lila, we don't really get some kind of backstory as to what may have caused people to transform into zombies. We are given a vague indication of it but not much expansion on the theory. That could also be because the story is rather short but I feel it is an element that would have have been nice to expand on.
Overall, this felt more like a romance novel with a mix of zombies rather than a post-apocolyptic zombie novel with a sprinkle of romance.