• Author: Hanna Jameson
• Series: Standalone
• No. of pages: 352
• Dates read: 16.05.20 – 18.05.20
• Star Rating: 3

First thing I would like to say is THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 100 FOLLOWERS! I have been doing this for about a year and a half now and I am so grateful that people are bothering to put time in to follow me and like what I post. So thank you 🙂

Plot: Jon Keller was on a trip to Switzerland when the world ended. More than anything he wishes he hadn’t ignored his wife Nadia’s last message. Twenty people remain in Jon’s hotel. Far from the nearest city, they wait, they survive. Then one day, the body of a girl is found. It’s clear she has been murdered. Which means that someone in the hotel is a killer… As paranoia descends, Jon decides to investigate. But how far is he willing to go in pursuit of justice? And what happens if the killer doesn’t want to be found?

I loved the first half of this story. I was hooked from the very beginning, I was consuming every sentence. I needed to know who murdered this poor girl and why! But something happened in the second half that lost me and I am not entirely sure what caused this.

One of my answers is this. I went into this book thinking it was a murder mystery that just happened to be set at the end of the world. And, while yes it was, the focus was less on the mystery and more on the characters and their survival in this hotel which sadly at times I found this boring. At times not much even happened it was just a lot of talking. I am more of a plot based reader than a character driven reader so I struggled in these chapters.

While I enjoyed the characters I wasn’t blown away by them. I really struggled to connect to Jon, the main character, and I think this also why I was bored, as we only follow his perspective.

And after making my way through this story. Getting past the parts which I felt boring hoping to feel fulfilled by the mystery, I was left underwhelmed by the reveal of the murderer. It felt out of the blue and felt like a last-minute addition to the story, as if the author spent more time on the survival aspect of the book and forgot about the murder mystery.

On a more positive note, there were a lot of characters of colour in this story. It’s good to see so many POC on the page, while this shouldn’t be applauded as we should see more POC characters in writing anyway, it’s still good to see.

I also found that the atmosphere created in this book whether it was panic, sadness or anger was done really well. Especially at the beginning when the bombs first hit. Those scenes are what got me hooked into the book in the first place.

Overall, I think this book would have been a 2 if it wasn’t for the solid first half.

The next book I will be reviewing is Finale by Stephanie Garber. The final book in the Caraval Trilogy. A trilogy which I started 2 years ago!