Both Emily Bronte and my former English teacher will probably be please to discover that I have a new least favourite book.
I’m not sure exactly how this got on to my Kindle. It is possible that Satan himself put it there.
Either that, or I read the synopsis on Amazon which is actually quite intriguing:
“After millions of people around the world vanish in one moment, in what many claim to be the Rapture, Rayford Steele begins a search for the truth amidst global chaos.”
The Walking Dead is brilliant because it takes the zombie apocalypse and deals with how people cope afterwards. The premise of this book, as stated above is that a large number of people just instantly vanish. Poof. Gone. How are those left behind going to deal with it? It’s a neat concept, right?
However, this book cannot live up to that in any way, shape or form. It is apparently only 256 pages long. It felt more like 256,000. It took me forever to plow my way through this pile of dirge.
I have a problem with leaving things uncompleted. I realised by at least a quarter of the way in that I didn’t like it but forced myself to finish it just in case it redeemed itself.
Not only that, but apparently there are another 12 books in this series. I have no idea how they can stretch it out to that and have absolutely no desire to find out.
Why didn’t I like it? It is just really poorly written. Where there is dialogue it is bland, uninteresting and it is very difficult to distinguish any different tone of voice between the characters.
The plot itself drags its feet. It suffers from the religious context which it feels the need to explain over and over and over. It then spends large sections of the book explaining to the read why Ray – the main character – decides to convert to Christianity. It does it in such a preachy way that it is obviously intended to convert the read. I’m an atheist, but whilst I have no problem with a religious context in a story, this basically feels even more like propaganda than the leaflets Jehovah’s Witnesses leave with you when you tell them to go away.
The characters really have very little personality. They are very shallow (in the way that they are written, rather than in their actual personality). Where there are hints of something interesting – the lead character having conflicting feelings about flirting with a woman other than his wife – they are very brief and killed off quickly. They are extremely one dimensional and have no internal conflict to make their stories any better.
They also have instantaneous changes of heart or opinion. Immediately after the disappearance, Ray basically says: “oh, it must be the rapture that my wife was talking about. I’d best repent.” When one character falls for another, it’s within about 3 minutes of meeting her.
They have made a film version of this and have cast my least favourite actor, Nicholas Cage, in the lead role. Apt for what is my least favourite book.
I would have given this zero stars on Goodreads if that was actually possible. I urge anyone not to waste their time reading this book.