MizNikki

I had seen this book around and when I was at the library one day, I decided to pick it up.

The First Days starts out with a really emotional scene that I hoped would set the stage for a well-written read. These sequences that I speak of evoked great emotion and I thought that was a spectacular way to start the reader on a journey through the end times. Jenni, her husband, the children…the scene at her house was perfect. Kudos to the author for that.

And then WHAM! Enter Katie, the strong lesbian, who instantly takes control of any and all situations. She wasn’t so bad of a character until she just blurts out at a very convenient moment that she is bisexual. Contrived for potential conflict? Me thinks so.

I have to say that the more I read, the more the writing seemed to disintegrate into a string of unbelievable dialogue and bad characterization.

The first moment that had my WTF Meter dinging was when Jenni, having lost her kids and abusive husband, offers herself to Katie. Really?! Katie shows sign of being in command and Jenni just ups and throws herself at her because she’s used to taking orders. Urm? No.

The action scenes were mainly well-done and the secondary characters were interesting and more believable than the main ones.

This read just had too many unreal moments from the boy who kept asking about being a lesbian to Jenni’s crazy man-stalking moments to all the relationship talk that seemed to dominate the last half of the book.

This book had some really good moments, but the scales were unbalanced.

The potential was there, it just wasn’t for me.