By Laura Van Den Berg

Well, it’s a happy doctor night (meaning we’re watching Supernatural, finishign season 2, starting season 3) and we’re celebrating my last day on the job so we’re drinking plenty of champagne and eating Chinese food.  Pretty much an ideal night.

Spoiler Free Review: This book is about a woman named Joy.  The world she’s in has been struck by a disease that slowly eats away at peoples minds, erasing their memories and then killing them.  Joy has become part of a test to see why people are immune and if they can help make a vaccine for the illness.  This hospital is a dark place and everything kind of sucks. Also there’s a plot point that Joy was abandoned as a child and has finally been given enough information to find her mother. Part two of the book is Joy out of the hospital and trying to find her mohter, which means traveling across the United States.  In all honesty this book lacks a lot.  Joy is a mostly uninteresting characters.  At the point wehre an interesting character is added to the hospital, literally nothing is done with taht person.  The traveling across teh U.S. was also pretty much not memorable (I’m amused that his is a book about not being able to remember anything and I’m here not remembering much about this plot only a week or so after having read this… Which means I’m focusing on broad points.  If this makes you want to read the book more power to you.).  In traveling across the US she runs into a friend from when she was younger, probably the most interesting part of the book, who wears a mask most of the time to cover a scarred face.   This book would have been better if more happened in the hospital or if the entire book was the traveling across the US but the abrupt change in the middle wasn’t really beneficial.  There was also a section with some rando’s that they ran into where the book became a bit of magical realism which actually had me really intrigued.

*****************Spoils Below*****************

Spoiler-y Review:

Not sure how much I have to put here considering that this book didn’t really have much happen.  Again the elements at the hospital were mostly uninteresting.  At some point, Joy learns that the ‘nurses’ are just normal people who are playing a role and getting to survive because of it, and that the doctor’s main plan is making people believe they can survive. A very “mind over matter” plot line.
The bigger spoilers happen after Joy escapes the hospital becuase her favorite other patients have all died.  She and Marcus, the childhood friend are traveling all around and run into a scientist and his girlfrienf with wings have a house that has everything they need. This section really just seemed like filler, but the magical realism was intriguing, however I personally feel that the author should have dug into this if that’s what she wanted.  As it was, it was mostly a disappointing side-quest.  Additionally the book ends right before Joy finds her mother, and I didn’t care!!!!! If I don’t care that I didn’t see a pivotal scene between the main character and the family, that means the book ultimately failed in making me care about any of the characters.

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Rating:  This book earns a shot and a half out of five.  The characters were lacking personality.  The author seemed to have trouble to actually commit to various plot points and I was disappointed that such an interesting premise ended up being such a lackluster book.  There would have been a number of interesting ways to focus on this book: what is the world like as people are losing their minds, what are the people who continue on in the midst of such chaos like, and how do people carry on afterwards.  The main character didn’t do a great job of showing anything interesting about the world.

What to Drink: Drink a Natty Light.  It’s not particularly pleasant, wont’ really get you drunk but it’s cheap and accessible.