I received this book for free, in exchange for an unbiased review.

A comet is heading for earth and with only 3 months warning, chaos ensues.

This is a dual story of the apocalypse and not, told at once. Apocalypse, because everything at ground zero is about as bad as you can get, and not apocalypse, because as the rest of the world is not destroyed. While society continues to break down at ground zero and people are dying from hunger, other people and a mysterious disease, scientists are studying the events and trying to figure out what has happened and why the earth survived.

This is a different concept, that is seldom explored. What would you do if you thought it would all be over tomorrow? And what if it didn’t end?

The story is definitely interesting, and I found myself always wondering what would happen next. Suspenseful, without being too much so. Dark at times, but with a hopefulness of better things.

As outlined in chapter 1, one of the main characters’ daughter was murdered. This turns out to be a major driving force for this character, and I couldn’t be happier. I am frankly tired of protagonist fathers, who focus on their spouse and not their children. Usually, they cant wait to see their spouse, fight to get home to them, struggle to save them, give their lives for them…only to also have kids who either have few to no lines, and provide none of the motivation for the character. I was therefore encouraged to find that Jack’s story was driven almost entirely by his daughters murder.

The voice acting was good, although, there were some times when a line was delivered in opposition to the description to it. Like delivering a flat read line, followed by “he screamed”. It wasn’t often, but it is something the voice director should have caught.

All in all, a fine book, with only a few problems (which are spoiler filled and I will outline below). Definitely worth checking out, and a fine opening to a series.

***Major Spoilers***

My main complaints about this book are that in an area of millions, interconnected people are thrown together, and that the end poses more questions than answers.

So, in the beginning, Jack hunts down his daughters killer who tells him about the real killer. We then have jack meet up with 2 other main characters. A therapist and a monster. On the flip side, his ex wife and new family head to a FEMA shelter.Jack then spends the rest of the book in a slow journey to get to the FEMA camp is ex is at, while the therapist finds out the monster is Jacks daughters’ killer. Jack gets to the FEMA shelter only to be in mind contact with his ex wife’s daughter. With all the connections to Jack, I was surprised that the therapist didn’t turn out to be Jacks ex wife’s therapist.

There is such a struggle to make everyone in the story interconnected that it just starts to become unrealistic. An area of around 7800 sq miles, and we cant get away from Jack`s connections.

The other problem is that the story doesn`t end with the book. I assume when the publisher bought the book, they bought a series. Because book 1 ends with the story unfinished, to be presumably, carried on in book 2,3,etc.

Personally I feel this is lazy. A book should end with the end of 1 story, then pick up book 2 at the beginning of story 2. They can be intertwined, a continuation, but there should be a clear ending. But that is my personal preference, I assume cliffhanger endings are popular because so many books and movies are ended with them.