Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Review: Past This Point by Nicole Mabry



Genre: Post-Apocalyptic

Description:

“Karis Hylen has been through the New York City dating wringer. After years of failed relationships, she abandons her social life and whittles her days down to work and spending time with her dog, Zeke. Her self-imposed exile ends up saving her life when an untreatable virus sweeps the east coast, killing millions.”

Author:

“Nicole Mabry spends her days at NBCUniversal as the Senior Manager of Photography Post Production. Her nights are reserved for writing novels. At the age of seven, she read The Boxcar Children, sparking a passion for reading and writing early on. Nicole grew up in the Bay Area in Northern California and went to college at UCLA for Art History. During a vacation, she fell in love with New York City and has lived in Queens for the past seventeen years. On weekends you can find her with a camera in hand and her dog, Jackson, by her side. Nicole is an animal lover and horror movie junkie.”

Appraisal:

I’m not sure that it is indicative of anything, but Nicole Mabry, the author of this book, Karis (the protagonist of the story), and I all look to the children’s book The Boxcar Children as one of the more significant reads of our life. While my memories of the plot details of that tale of four orphaned siblings who end up living in an abandoned boxcar are skimpy for me more than a half-century after my Mom read it to my siblings and I, I can’t help but compare that book to this one. Sure, the stories are completely different genres and you’ve got one adult who is largely on her own for much of the book as opposed to four kids. But in both they find themselves in an unprecedented situation and are forced to figure things out on their own. Determining how to provide themselves with the most basic things like food, water, and shelter are a challenge.

Of course, Past this Point has some major differences from The Boxcar Children too. The big one is with Karis being on her own and needing to be careful how and with whom she interacts. Can another person be trusted? Are they safe or are they infected with the virus sweeping the Eastern US? These kind of challenges and how a character figures things out and deals with them are a big part of a good post-apocalyptic story and are well done in this book. I found it to be intense, entertaining, and at times thought-provoking. An excellent read.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues.

Rating: ***** Five Stars

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 115-120,000 words

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