4.5 out of 5 stars
Joe, the main character of our novel – is as no-nonsense as you come. He doesn’t care about much. He works as a mechanic when he finds out that his best friend and fiance are both dead. On top of that, he finds out that his beloved grandmother passed in the same week. Having lost it all he goes out to his Grandmother’s cabin in rural Oregon to get away (at the suggestion of his deceased grandma).
The grandma notes/letters in American Survivor really made it an enjoyable book to me. It was a nice change of pace to have a non-prepper being taught by a semi-prepper (in grandma) through letters. Every time Joe would find something he didn’t think he could deal with – there was a letter from grandma to make him feel better (or tell him to suck it up). I’m not sure who did the narration for these parts, but she had the perfect “motherly/grandmotherly” tone for it and really added to the story.
Newman writes about a couple different situations from a few points of view and some of them were a little thin (a girl who gets whatever she wants because of her body) but that didn’t take away from the story at all in my eyes. I find that there are really people like that and it wouldn’t be so far-fetched that Joe would run across someone like that early on into an apocalypse. Another “thin” part of the book were the bad guys. I think that Newman was trying to write characters that were easy to hate but just adding “alu Akbar” (forgive my spelling, I’m not going to look that up and get added to another list) does not make them multi-dimensional. I also assume that Newman is holding out some information for the other books in the series.
It was interesting to view the apocalypse from someone who basically doesn’t know it’s happening yet. I don’t know why it’s just nice to read it in my opinion.
Overall, a refreshing and easy reading post-apocalyptic book. I enjoyed American Survivor and if you’re a PA fan, then I think you’ll enjoy this too. I requested a copy of this book for review it has not affected my review in any way.