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A review by spookyoctopusreads
Waiting Out Winter by Kelli Owen
3.0
I kept debating what to say about this one for quite some time before I sat down to type this. To be honest, this book just wasn't something that drew me in, even though it could easily be read in one sitting, and has received quite a few glowing reviews.
On the one hand, I enjoyed the soft, but fresh, take on the apocalypse trope. The world seems to be ending when Nick and his friends return from a hunting trip to find the streets empty and the town boarded up with not a soul in sight. They soon learn that the government has made a mistake when they released infected flies to kill off a tent worm invasion. The flies actually end up killing off far more than the tent worms. That set-up alone makes this a scary, and seemingly realistic, scenario. It would certainly be enough to give me a full blown panic attack.
On the other hand, I just couldn't get into the story. The concept was there, but I just didn't find myself connecting to the characters or having any inkling of concern for them. I just read through the pages feeling very ho-hum about the entire thing. The execution of the events preceding the fly invasion and Nick's return home were rather lifeless and vanilla, in my opinion. I felt that the most compelling characters in the story were the children, and I would have loved to have seen them developed more. Seeing the fly apocalypse through the eyes of children who don’t know if they’ll ever play in the sunshine again would have been more interesting to me.
Although the premise was a good one, there just wasn’t enough going on in the book to really garner my full attention. There was lots of sitting in the house talking about what was happening and what could happen. We just kept hearing about it but didn’t really “see” much of the apocalypse. Each time I thought the story was picking up, the moment was fleeting and then quickly dissipated.
On the one hand, I enjoyed the soft, but fresh, take on the apocalypse trope. The world seems to be ending when Nick and his friends return from a hunting trip to find the streets empty and the town boarded up with not a soul in sight. They soon learn that the government has made a mistake when they released infected flies to kill off a tent worm invasion. The flies actually end up killing off far more than the tent worms. That set-up alone makes this a scary, and seemingly realistic, scenario. It would certainly be enough to give me a full blown panic attack.
On the other hand, I just couldn't get into the story. The concept was there, but I just didn't find myself connecting to the characters or having any inkling of concern for them. I just read through the pages feeling very ho-hum about the entire thing. The execution of the events preceding the fly invasion and Nick's return home were rather lifeless and vanilla, in my opinion. I felt that the most compelling characters in the story were the children, and I would have loved to have seen them developed more. Seeing the fly apocalypse through the eyes of children who don’t know if they’ll ever play in the sunshine again would have been more interesting to me.
Although the premise was a good one, there just wasn’t enough going on in the book to really garner my full attention. There was lots of sitting in the house talking about what was happening and what could happen. We just kept hearing about it but didn’t really “see” much of the apocalypse. Each time I thought the story was picking up, the moment was fleeting and then quickly dissipated.