Review: Aftertime by Sophie Littlefield

Book Description: 

Awakening in a bleak landscape as scarred as her body, Cass Dollar vaguely recalls surviving something terrible. Wearing unfamiliar clothes and having no idea how many days—or weeks—have passed, she slowly realizes the horrifying truth: Ruthie has vanished.

And with her, nearly all of civilization. Where once-lush hills carried cars and commerce, the roads today see only cannibalistic Beaters—people turned hungry for human flesh by a government experiment gone wrong.

In a broken, barren California, Cass will undergo a harrowing quest to get her Ruthie back. Few people trust an outsider, let alone a woman who became a zombie and somehow turned back, but she finds help from an enigmatic outlaw, Smoke. Smoke is her savior, and her safety. For the Beaters are out there. And the humans grip at survival with their trigger fingers. Especially when they learn that she and Ruthie have become the most feared, and desired, of weapons in a brave new world....

My review:

Sophie Littlefield has a fantastic voice, a visual writing style and she absolutely scared the pants off me. Her words just seem to come alive and it's like you're right there in the pages of the book or in one of those dreams that you can't wake up from. I was having crazy beater nightmares by chapter 4!! But it's more than being scared because even then you are emotionally invested in the characters, in Cass's search for her daughter and what will happen next.


It literally took me weeks to get halfway through the book because I kept scaring myself. I tried reading in happy places like the school playground while my kids jumped around on monkey bars and slides, in the teacher's lounge between work and going home for the day, in my cozy bed with the covers pulled up to my head and Harry Potter in the background...nothing worked. It's not like I'm even new to the zombie craze. Heck, I watched The Walking Dead and thought it was a good show and I really like the Quirk titles like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies that make the classics funny and new. This just felt too real for me. And I'm apparently a big baby.


Here's the first scene that really freaked me out. It starts out with Cass, the protagonist, still working at the QikGo even though the world has started to go wonky, and in this scene she encounters some very strange customers:


Her voice trailed off as he turned and stared at her with wide unblinking blue eyes. "Dome going," he said softly, then raised his wounded forearm to his face and, eyes still fixed on her, licked his lips and took a delicate nip at his red, glistening skin. His teeth closed on the damaged flesh and pulled, the raw layers of dermis pulling away from his arm, stretching and then splitting, a shred of flesh about the size of a match tearing away, leaving a bright, tiny spot of blood that glistened and pooled into a larger drop.  


How crazy is that?


Please do not mistake my intentions for this review. If you like zombies then this book is definitely for you. So even though this book wasn't really for me I highly recommend it for those that are not afraid. In fact, if you have read this book, or are going to read this book then I would love to hear from you. Maybe have you post a guest review here on the blog so others can see just how good this book truly is.