One Second After

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I feel like have done nothing but apologize for the last few posts about my neglectfulness to my readers.  I mean I worked so hard to build a quality book blog and then I had to go and have a kid.  Naturally that sucked up all my free time and made it somewhat impossible to blog, much less read a dang book!  Chasing around a very active 11 month old little boy is exhausting so when the lights go out in his nursery, so do mine!  But here I go again, begging all of my readers to be patient with me and promising that I will write more posts however, I am not promising that they will be consistent and I am not promising that I won't start reviewing Green Eggs and Ham {haha}.  But I digress, this, after all, is strictly a "book blog" and not a "brag about my adorable, smart, funny, sweet, lovable, baby boy blog".  So lets get to why we are all here... To talk about William Forstchen's amazing book One Second After.

My obsession with Dystopia might have climaxed with One Second After.  Though, I am not sure you can call this book Dystopia.  There wasn't time for a Dystopian society to materialize because this book is literally about what happens ONE SECOND AFTER society crumbles.  It shows the breakdown of society as we know it; not the unrest of a rebuilt anti-utopia like we see in Hunger Games or The Handmaid's Tale.  This book may fall more firmly in the realm of prepping or survival.  At any rate this book is very very interesting.  As you can see I am really not myself in the post with snarky quips about my amazement or my OMGs about how fabulous this book is, but don't let that mislead you, I am out of my head about this book, however, my feelings fall more toward unrest and disturbance if that makes sense.  I read this book months ago and every single day after that I have thought about the fact that I. AM. NOT. PREPARED. 

So this book starts off with the introduction of it's characters as most books do.  We meet our main character John Matherson and his family {he is a widower and has two daughters - one with insulin dependent diabetes}, seconds after we meet this nice family in a quaint mountain town in North Carolina all goes dark.  I MEAN EVERYTHING PEOPLE!!!  Phones, lights, computers, cars, MP3 players, air planes are literally falling out of the sky.  EVERYTHING loses power!  The reason behind this NATION WIDE black out is an EMP {electro magnetic pulse, look it up it will scare the shit out of you}.  This EMP is a weapon of mass destruction that no one was ready for, and the effects of it's destruction are indefinite and devastating.  America is completely dark and there is absolutely positively NO communication to be had from coast to coast.  We are essentially cast into the dark ages and everything has collapsed in a matter of a second.  

Now that you are feeling as cheery as I am about the situation, lets talk about the fact that our main character's daughter is an insulin dependent diabetic.  There is no power so there is no way to keep anything cold, so lets go down that road for a few moments and see where it ends...  Also, were do we get food?  What do we do with the motorists that were stranded on the freeway?  What about things like sanitation, clean water, our loved ones that were away from home at the moment the EMP went off?  And these are just questions to ask in the first few days of such a destructive weapon.  What happens when Marshal Law is declared?  When common sicknesses start epidemics because there is no more medicine to fight them? What happens when people start getting desperate?  Are you as freaked out as I am yet....

No, your not?  Well let me just say that after you research what exactly an EMP is, you will start stocking up your beans and rice supply and start thinking about a plan to survive.  Seriously folks, this is something that could happen.  Not something some SiFi minded author dreamed up, and that my friends is why this new mom is having a freak out almost daily about this book.  I am glad I read it, however, I wish I never did...

The writing in this book is easy to read, not the best ever but good, I mean Forstchen isn't Hemingway but I hung on his every word so that's something.  I would highly recommend this to everyone just for the pure fact that it will give you an education.  A book club could discuss the hell out of it.  BUT if you are a new mom like myself, maybe you should wait until after your little nugget is a little older and your hormones are back to where they should be. 

RATING: 5 Stars

3 more reviews:

ParaJunkie

Growing Human

Small World Reads

One Second After by William R. Forstchen

{purchased on Amazon.com for my Kindle}

ASIN B002LATV16

If you liked One Second After by William R. Forstchen please read The Road by Cormic McCarthy

Her Fearful Symmetry (ranting a bit... Sorry)

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**Disclaimer** Whenever I give a book a bad review I write my review and then I don't post it for quite a few days because I want to make sure that I really mean what I am saying and not giving a sort of deserving book a bad wrap.  So if I sound terrible and snarky it is because this book made me this way.  I chose and rechose my words carefully and this is purely my opinion.

You know when you were a kid and Christmas or your Birthday rolled around and there was that one great big box dressed all in bright beautiful paper that you were just dying to rip into?  The one that you just knew was that most coveted toy or that puppy you asked for?  Then when you were given the OK you tore off the wrapping paper and opened the lid only to be confronted with a few pairs of rolled up sock that our Aunt Hilda knitted you.  Well that doesn't even slightly compare to the disappointment I was in store for when I set out to read Her Fearful Symmetry.  I was looking forward to this book so much and I wanted to love it really really hard despite the bad reviews it was getting, but alas, the reviews were bad for a reason people!  After The Time Travelers Wife (which I consider my all time favorite book, and have read almost 8 times) I was expecting my mind to be blown with her amazing story telling skills and genius mind like I was the first time I read TTTW, but y'all, it was blown because the book was utter garbage!  Audrey can tell a story I will give her that, her writing is BEAUTIFUL with a capital B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L and her mind goes place that no one else's can go but this story was so disjointed and so pointless that I wanted to beat myself with the book rather than read it.  I know I sound hateful but my heart is broken with disappointment and like a child I don't want to wear my disappointment with dignity, I want to through a temper tantrum!

So I guess I have to tell you what this book is about a little bit.  And there might be some spoilers here but I edited out all the twisty bits.  Ok so, Elspeth and Edie are twins.  They have a big falling out and one moves to the Untied States (Edie) and one stays in London (Elspeth).  Elspeth gets the cancer and she dies.  Edie has twin girls of her own (Julia and Valentina) and they are lazy, whiney, 20 year olds that just sit around all day watching HGTV (seriously).  Anyway, Elspeth dies of the cancer like I said and leaves her nieces (Julia and Valentina) her flat in London with the stipulation that they live in it for a year before they sell it and that their parents are not allowed to come into the flat, ever.  Meanwhile, Elspeth's boyfriend Robert is devastated by Elspeths death and can't get over her at all so he does some really naughty things with her shoes (umm yes he did).  Julia and Valentina move in to their aunts flat but guess what?  Elspeth is a ghost and she lives (errr.. haunts) in the flat too.  Then Robert falls in love with Valentina which is creepy and Elspeth gets a little jealous.  Elspeth learns how to communicate with the girls and Robert via a Ouija Board (I am dead serious) and she also learns how to take the souls out of living things and then put them back (and she practices on a poor little kitten that Valentina loves).  Throughout this whole train wreck of a story Valentina has some pent up resentment for her sister Julia and decided she has to kill herself to get away from her (ummm... because that's what I feel like I have to do when I'm annoyed with my sibling).  So Valentine concocts this brilliant plan to have Elspeth rip her soul out of her body, keep it safe, and then replace it once her sister and her parents think she is dead and buried in the cemetery that is next door (and is probably the most important character in this book -um the cemetery not Valentina).  (Come on!!!  Seriously??  I mean decay??  Gross??)  Elspeth is happy to oblige because Valentina is getting a little too cozy with Robert.  Now about this time the story starts to take some crazy twists and turns that will leave you scratching your head and muttering WTF under your breath but believe me you are better off not wasting your time.  Unless you are like me and want to find out for yourself.  But don't say I didn't warn you.

Obviously you can tell that I am in deep hate with this book, so here is where I usually tell you who I would recommend this book to.  NO ONE.  Don't waste your time.  If you feel the itch to read Her Fearful Symmetry just pick up The Time Travelers Wife instead.  I can't believe that the same person wrote both of these books!  I mean TTTW was so ingenious, Niffenegger told that story with so much detail and the whole idea of that story was so thought out and just perfect but Her Fearful Symmetry felt like she used up all her creative juices with TTTW and just threw HFS together at the last minute because Simon and Schuster gave her a FIVE MILLION DOLLAR advance and she forgot when the deadline was, then all of a sudden she looked at her calendar and was like "crap I have to write a book by next Thrusday!  Whatever am I going to do?"

BOOK vs. MOVIE: I might watch this as if it came out as a movie.  Because the book was so terrible that the movie would probably be really good!  I mean movies made about great books usually suck so maybe we would get a blockbuster with this bad book.

RATING: 1 and a half star (the half star is for the fact that the writing was done well just not the story part)

3 More Reviews of Her Fearful Symmetry:

Books I Done Read (She LURVED the book so I wanted to give you the flip side)

Gus Greeper

Well Read Reviews

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger:

9781439165393

Pages: 401

If you liked this book than read: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield