Lethal Life

The Other Life by Susanne Winnacker
* ARC read via Around The World ARC Tours

4 gnomes out of 5 gnomes

Sherry is a great character who keeps going even in the face of tragedy.  She was forced to grow up pretty fast and sometimes feels like more of an adult then her parents.  She has lived in the confines of a bunker with her parents, grandparents, and siblings for about 3 years.  That is crazy to imagine, I can imagine most families going insane long before three years are up.

This is one book where the UK cover is definitely a lot better then the US one.  The US version looks kind of horror movie cliché while the UK one in my opinion anyway just seems to be more fitting for the story.

I love the set up of the story with each chapter having a little scene of what life was like before the rabies.  These scenes from before are pretty happy and then some kind of menacing elements start to slip in.  It makes you wonder how everything came down to people living this desperately and how fast exactly everything went downhill. 

At first you don't know what the threat is and why this family is hiding in a shelter.  Everything seems almost normal like and then the food in the shelter runs out.  This means that someone has to go into the outside world again to search for food.  They have been so sheltered though that they know nothing of some major events that have happened. 

Sherry and her father go outside and discover that the world for has been undeniably changed.  It's like a wasteland and then of course there are the weepers to worry about.  The weepers are described kind of like a mixture between zombies and werewolves.  The description of the Weepers had me picturing the freaks from The Hunger Games book.  In other words these Weepers are not something to be trifled with.

Her and her father are attacked and then Sherry is saved by Joshua.  In the process though her father is taken.  Sherry can't let down her family and knows that she has to find out what happened to her father.  As you can imagine this is a problem too because she also has to make sure her family is protected.

You can tell that Joshua is going to be the love interest right away, but he and Sherry do have some great chemistry together.  He's the damaged loner type and she's the girl trying to prove herself in this new world and keep her family alive.  You slowly learn more about him and all that he has witnessed in this crazy new world.  He seems a little too hell-bent on revenge sometimes but you'll find that he does have a compelling reason for being the way that he is.

The group of survivors that take her is a rather eclectic bunch but they are also some pretty great supporting characters.  I hope that we find out more of there back stories in the next book, especially Tyler who has seen so much chaos and hardly even talks. 

Just like any good book about zombie-like creatures, there are a plethora of problems and some scary situations.  The twist at the end of this book is really well done.  There are clues throughout about what the twist is but this surprise brings all the pieces together and gives Sherry and Joshua a new mission.