I love a good post apocalypse story, so when I read Wake me after the apocalypse's summary, I had high expectations. Also, the cover is beautiful. On top of that, I share a name with the author, though mine is spelt differently (I've only ever met one other person with the same spelling as me), so I was intrigued. I'm not sure if anyone else feels that when they meet someone with the same name as them.
Wake me after the apocalypse exceeded my expectations.
Firstly, the suspense. Wow, this author know's how to write suspense. I could not put this book down! The style of the writing in this book was a style I usually hate, with ‘Before’ the event and ‘After’ the event chapters. Usually this style of writing bores me and I feel like it ruins the event itself. But the way Rivet wrote this book actually made this style work and it created a lot of suspense, and made me realise this is how this style should work.
The ‘event’ in paticular wasn't an event readers wanted to see how it happened (e.g. like a murder for example), we already know it's a comet that's going to hit the earth. The suspense was actually wanting to find out what the world was like after the comet had hit. Was the comet a lie and was everyone alive? Was the air actually breathable? Would the predictions be accurate?
We start with a bang, the first few chapters start with ‘After’ chapters, Joanna wakes up in her cryosleep chamber and immediately notices something isn't right. We spend the first few chapters exploring her reality. The following chapter is a ‘Before’ chapter that explains Cryosleep and Joanna's world before the event. It helps set up the story about the comet hurtling towards the earth and the revelation it was on an impact collision and would cause an extinction level event.
The twists and turns were really well done. For the first third of the book we're reading in anticipation of what Joanna will find if she can make it up to the top of the mine. At first I was getting annoyed at the ‘Before’ chapters because I just wanted to see what the world was like after the comet, and I thought these chapters were delaying this reveal. But part way through the book, it became very clear why this style of writing was needed to tell this books story, I wouldn't have felt the emotions I did had I not read the ‘Before’ chapters. Just a testiment to clearly show that Rivet knows her craft.
The following story wasn't one I expected but I highly enjoyed it, I didn't really expect any of the twists so it was really exciting getting to feel surprised and not having any idea where the story was going to go to next. It kept me up reading well into the early hours of the morning…
Wake me after the apocalypse was a really fun read, it was a page turner, and it also took me through a mix of emotions.
This book made me instantly put every other book series that Jordan Rivet has written onto my to be read list. Her style of storytelling is addictive and I want to read all the stories she's written.