The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza

by Shaun David Hutchinson

Elena, the first scientifically confirmed virgin birth, acquires the ability to heal by touch at age sixteen, the same year that people start disappearing in beams of light, causing her to wonder if she is bringing about the Apocalypse.

• ISBN10: 1481498541
• ISBN13: 9781481498548
• Publish Date: 6 February 2018
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Simon Pulse
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 448
• Language: English

Reviews

[leahrosereads]

This was my first Shaun David Hutchinson novel, and I liked it just fine.

I definitely preferred the characters over the story, but religious undertones always end up being pretty hard for me to enjoy.

That being said though, the family dynamics here are pretty great, and all of the characters felt genuine and flawed and just fantastically developed.

I'll definitely try another book by this author in the future.

[girlinthepages]

I'm not sure what I expected when I started this book, to tell you the truth, but it certainly wasn't what I read. The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza took me by surprise, as I suppose any end of the world YA story that starts in a Starbucks would.

Our protagonist, Elena, is immediately established to be ~unique~ as she was the product of a virgin birth, explained by the happening of parthenogenesis, which was cool in theory but I have no idea if it could ever happen in real life to a human, but I just went along with it, because what do English majors know about such things anyway? I thought perhaps the story might have taken a bit of a religious spin with the virgin birth premise, however it almost had more of a sci-fi feel, with Elena discovering her mysterious power to heal after saving a classmate who is shot at Starbucks one day. As you can probably imagine, things spiral a bit out of control from there, with Elena exploring her healing power and the voices telling her she needs to save as many people as she can before the end of the world.

All in all, though there were a lot of elements about this story that were plain ridiculous, at its core I found it interesting and a bit of a tongue in cheek commentary of the popularity of end of the world plots in books/movies/tv, mixed in with those random news stories about miracles or people finding visions of deities in their toast. I like that despite the craziness of the plot Elena never took things too seriously and that she was a remarkably likeable character who's voice was comfortable to settle into, and despite her virgin birth and ability to perform miracles it never felt like it was being forced on me that she was a special snowflake of a character (which is honestly a pet peeve of mine). I also enjoyed the strong relationships she had with her best friend (in a completely platonic way! Hooray!) and her mom. There was just a lot of positive relationships (and diversity) in this book that never felt forced.

However, where the book did lose my favor was in the fact that it felt like not a whole lot actually HAPPENED. It was mostly just Elena mulling over her strange healing power and its repercussions, and pining after a crush who was honestly not a very nice person to her and so angsty I couldn't stand it (I was so tired of Freddie being allowed to go off on Elena and call her out on all sorts of stuff and just get away with it because she was a self proclaimed terrible person). After a while I really tired of these conversations that I think were supposed to be deep and meaningful about humans and human behavior and free will and who was worth saving, etc. but it honestly felt abusive after a while and I was 100% over Freddie.

~Mild spoilers ahead~

My number one complaint with this book that was worth knocking probably a whole star off was the lack of closure. The book ends super abruptly and I know personally I spent the whole time waiting for some big reveal about how the world was going to end/if Elena was really hearing voices coming out of Legos and My Little Ponies telling her to save people, or if it was hallucinations, etc. When I read a book about the end of the world I expect to find out about HOW THE WORLD ENDS but nope, it honestly just left everything super open ended and really just felt like a YA contemporary with some good diversity elements but threw in the apocalypse/miracles to make it ~different~ but then didn't go all the way with the themes, which sort of ruined the whole reading experience for me.

Overall: I enjoyed the narrator of the audio book and liked Elena as a character, but the lack of closure or really any explanation at all in this novel left me frustrated. If you're looking for another contemporary YA that wants to try to tackles some social issues under a veil of absurdity, this is the right read for you, but I find it to be very anticlimactic. This review was originally posted on Girl in the Pages

[Stephanie]

Not my favorite SDH book, but I liked parts of it separately than the whole book collectively.