Sometimes I think I should call my blog, "What not to read"...
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The Blurb:
In this first book in the Step By Step trilogy, global catastrophe occurs as all plastic mysteriously liquefies. All the small components making many technologies possible—navigation systems, communications, medical equipment—fail.
In Sycamore River, citizens find their lives disrupted as everything they've depended on melts around them, with sometimes fatal results. All they can rely upon is themselves.
And this is only the beginning .
The Review
This just goes to show how I can be influenced by a short snazzy blurb and a beautiful cover design. This had all the hallmarks of being a book I would love - dystopian, slightly sci-fi, focussing on the impact on a small town.
And this is a great idea. We rely on man made substances in nearly everything we do, so if something like this truly happened we would be up the proverbial creek without a paddle (especially if it were made of plastic...)
But...and there's no fancy way to say this... this book is not written very well. It's clunky, confusing and full of half baked characters. You would expect in a plot where all the world's plastic is disintegrating, that there would be much more of an 'apocalypse' feel to it. You anticipate that there would be some momentous events as we watch the break down of civilisation before our eyes.
Errrr...nope. Two things sort of happen, and a few people die as a result, but these events are pretty much nothing to do with the dissolution of plastics. And the main characters that we follow in this story just bumble on without any real demonstration of emotion or any hint of having distinct personalities.
Unfortunately all this book will do is encourage your brain to melt out of your ears in the same way the plastics in the story do. Suffice to say I won't be reading the rest in the trilogy.
Thanks to the Publisher and Netgalley for this preview copy in return for an honest review.