4.5 out of 5 stars
While reading this I kept thinking to myself, “is this related to the other books in the series?”. I know that it takes place at the same time, but I wasn’t sure if there was a reason that Pike went on a side-track for this story, but I am glad that she did.
The characters in this were interesting and honestly, I think I liked them as much as the other characters in the first three books. I found them instantly compelling and I wanted to know what was going to happen to them.
Having the story take place at the Alamo was a nice touch. Throwing history into the book, especially for people who were fighting to stay alive and having what some would call a “last stand” was great in my opinion.
Pike knows what she’s talking about and includes a lot of little tidbits in here that sprinkle in real-life knowledge with fictional stories about fictional people. It’s nice to learn something while being entertained.
The dynamic between Nico and Kate was a very memorable one. They had this different kind of connection. It wasn’t instant like most books (sure it was over a week or so), but some Post-Apocalyptic books seem to follow the theme of, it’s the end of the world… oh, you’re pretty, let’s make babies! But, this felt more real. It felt like Nico waited and tried his hardest to win over Kate and her service dog.
The inclusion of a service dog (for a mostly undisclosed reason) was really interesting to me too. Kate needed help calming down and not going over the edge into a panic attack and I thought that it was a really unique use of a dog in a PA book.
Overall, Pike hit another home run with this book, and I’m definitely glad that I read it.
I was given a free copy of this book which has not affected my review in any way.