Aftertime ~ Sophie Littlefield ARC review

Aftertime

Luna

February 15, 2011

384 pages
Goodreads/Amazon/Book Depository


The world is no longer the world we all know now. Beings known as Beaters wander the world

and threaten all of us who are still human. Cass witnessed it all change slowly until almost nothing normal was left.

Now Cass has awakened, dirty, beat up, and with no exact memory of how she got that way. She knows she was taken by Beaters (zombies) and believes she ate some of the plant that turns people into Beaters. But Cass is still in full control of her capacities.

Now, Cass's main goal is to make it back to the town she was taking shelter in and back to her daughter, Ruthie. In the weeks since she's been gone Cass has made it many miles away and the journey back will be perilous. Through a string of events she meets a man called Smoke who agrees to accompany her back.

A four mile trip through a zombie infested war zone like area soon becomes much more--both in distance and significance.

The beginning of Aftertime is what you would get if you took the best, scariest zombie book and turned it into a book--without losing anything.

It's not just a 'scare-you' horror book, however. Or just a zombie book. There's plot and depth to it. It's also about Cass's quest to overcome alcoholism and to learn how to become a good mother.

Aftertime is definitely an adult book. Banished by Sophie Littlefield was a YA book and the Bad Day series was more YA acceptable, but this is much more adult content-y.

The middle reads a little slower--probably because the beginning introduces what's happened to society and creeps readers out with the zombies while the middle deals with the more day to day (or as much as it can be) with Cass and Smoke on their journey.

I did very much like that it was a whole society that was thought out--and so many different aspects and locations in/of that society. Aftertime wasn't focused just on one event or one person, but showed everything that can happen in this new society--and what hope people in it just might have. Or not.

8/10

Read thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin!