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A review by brennanlafaro
Waiting Out Winter by Kelli Owen
4.0
3.5 stars rounded up for Goodreads.
This book offered a take on an end-of-the-world type plague that almost makes you snicker at first, but is increasingly terrifying as you go along. In Waiting Out Winter, death comes via a single bit from an infected fly. Zombies, you can barricade yourself away from, but a fly? No matter how airtight you think you’ve sealed yourself in, there’s always going to be the chance one gets in.
This is where Kelli Owen injects a lot of the horror into this story. There is an especially tense and well-written scene in which a character attempts to find a fly in the darkness, knowing they must kill it before it can bite them. I also liked the added danger in this created world where the sickness turns animals into rabid, hungry beasts, adding another layer of danger for an already tenuous group of survivors.
I will rarely fault a novella for being too short, and generally don’t care for reviews that do, but this is largely dependent on the author packing a complete story into my short time spent with them. This book in its complete form felt like chapter one in an apocalyptic epic. Owen lets us know that the story continues in the Hatch, but as a reader, I felt like this portion of the story had a little more to tell me.
Waiting Out Winter also does a fair bit with the survivors we spend our time with. There was room for them to be more fleshed out, but I had no problem empathizing when bad things happen, both with the character it happens to and the characters left to deal with the aftermath. A sure sign that the groundwork was laid, whether I noticed or not.
Truth be told, I will almost certainly pick up The Hatch. I know these survivors already, and there’s nothing I hate worse than spiders.
This book offered a take on an end-of-the-world type plague that almost makes you snicker at first, but is increasingly terrifying as you go along. In Waiting Out Winter, death comes via a single bit from an infected fly. Zombies, you can barricade yourself away from, but a fly? No matter how airtight you think you’ve sealed yourself in, there’s always going to be the chance one gets in.
This is where Kelli Owen injects a lot of the horror into this story. There is an especially tense and well-written scene in which a character attempts to find a fly in the darkness, knowing they must kill it before it can bite them. I also liked the added danger in this created world where the sickness turns animals into rabid, hungry beasts, adding another layer of danger for an already tenuous group of survivors.
I will rarely fault a novella for being too short, and generally don’t care for reviews that do, but this is largely dependent on the author packing a complete story into my short time spent with them. This book in its complete form felt like chapter one in an apocalyptic epic. Owen lets us know that the story continues in the Hatch, but as a reader, I felt like this portion of the story had a little more to tell me.
Waiting Out Winter also does a fair bit with the survivors we spend our time with. There was room for them to be more fleshed out, but I had no problem empathizing when bad things happen, both with the character it happens to and the characters left to deal with the aftermath. A sure sign that the groundwork was laid, whether I noticed or not.
Truth be told, I will almost certainly pick up The Hatch. I know these survivors already, and there’s nothing I hate worse than spiders.