Spoiler alert and strictly my opinion…. I give away information in this review that kinda gives away major parts of the story, so if you plan listening then just dont read my review. lol… It’s actually a really good book and you should give it a try because you might feel completely different about it then me. I’m sorry to the author for my thought, its nothing towards you personally. I honestly loved 98 % of this book, but the other 2 % turned me off from continuing this series… for now at least….
First of all, Kevin Pierce gave a five star performance as always. The story starts out great, but I just couldn’t get past how the main group decided to deal with their murderous unstable friend. The mentally deranged friend was a good part of making the story suspenseful, but how they chose to deal with his cold blooded murder just bothered me. Why boxes of dirt? One of their people murders an innocent old timer trying to run a grocery store and then they try to trick them over a couple boxes of supplies. Yeah they asked for more, but a simple explanation and some boxes not filled with dirt probably would have lead to a much more stomaching outcome. Why not just give them the murderous phyco and some food and tell them the truth? I get that maybe the deranged friend might play a role in the future, but maybe he could have just escaped or something just before his just execution AFTER being handed over. Or something…. They could have just told the poor widow he did it behind their backs and handed him over. It was just too foolish for me. In my opinion they should have tried to make an alliance with the towns people using honestly and justice. The story could have still lead to the certain conflict with the growing rise of the raiders without killing so many innocent towns people. I would have been able this plot if the store owners wife and brother in law/family didnt come across as such normal people. If they were depicted as unreasonable poeple and only deception would have got Emma back, then I could understand how things went down. I Just don’t like this group after how they handled the situation. hard to continue a story when you don’t like the main characters anymore. This had so much potential and I’m sure the next two books are better, I was just left irritated that these out of towners unnecessarily killed innocent locals. that being said im not a writer and just because I have a opinion doesn’t mean that I’m right or you won’t feel different. maybe I’ll try the next book later on when I’m not so irritated with the characters.
One last thing…. why so much dang time on a fence that can just be cut?!?! They go as far as a cement barrier, but anyone with a cheap pair of cutters can breach the perimeter at anyplace easily avoiding the costly razor wire and concrete. Or security cameras!? They had all kinds of other electronics protected? or at least using the night vision mentioned in the beginning for their patrols? How can they come accrross as so smart, but as the son points out be so ignorant about the fence. Why not some wire ran along the fence that when cut trips some alarms or something??? At least cheap trip wires and proximity sensors around the barns and other buildings. It seems they had plenty of materials sufficient for this 🤔 I dunno I don’t mean to sound so judgmental, I guess I just feel this book could have really held my attention with a few reasonable tweaks.