Good Evening World!

Man, has it been a long week or is it just me? I’ve worked every day this week and am in some desperate need of some R&R!

Anywho, today I did get to relax a little bit and finished another book! This time around it’s The Upheaval by Erica Stevens.

Fun fact, this is my first ever buddy read, and I was fortunate enough to get to do it with Iseult Murphy. Definitely look out for our buddy read post coming up soon, but for now I am simply sharing my sole opinion of the book.

Let’s rock this!

Blurb:

The First tremors of the earth were felt at 7:22 EST. time. Every single person felt the rumbling, and experienced the tremors that would forever alter the course of history. Most did not survive. These are the accounts of some of those that did.

The Review:

I gave this book three apocalyptic stars.

This book was a lot of firsts for me. This was both my first time doing a buddy read and the first time I attempted listening to a book rather than reading it. In the end, I switched back to reading it. The narrator was good in my opinion but it was taking too long for my liking.

Alright, so this book is basically centered on three separate groups of people and their experience trying to survive the apocalypse when the Earth is torn asunder by the elements.

Every chapter rotates perspective between a number of the characters, primarily Riley, John, Carl, Al, and Mary Ellen.

Although I did have some qualms with this book, I did enjoy a decent amount of it.

The premise instantly made me want to read it. I actually thought this was a zombie novel, but was pleasantly surprised when it didn’t turn out that way. The catastrophe of nature was really interesting, and that really propelled me forward in the beginning.

Unfortunately, once I got past the first few chapters I started having some issues with a lot of things.

The characters at first were interesting and unique, but there is a lot of info dumping in this book. I understand that we needed to know more about the characters, but the reader can only handle so much before they start rolling their eyes (yes, I rolled my eyes plenty during this read). We don’t need everyone’s complete life story.

I wasn’t really buying the romance aspect in this book. How someone can go from intense dislike to love in seven hours is beyond me, but I’m not going to pretend that I was convinced.

The writing wasn’t bad technically, but was overwritten in my opinion. Thought sequences go on for way too long before any action happens (chapter nineteen about killed me), and even when the action is happening, instead of providing details about what the characters are seeing, we get play by plays on action tags, so much that I start skimming over them.

Action tags are fine, but you sprinkle them in lightly. We don’t need that level of detail, it’s just too much and gets annoying.

The plot was alright, but a little too reactive for my liking. I prefer plot-based stories and this felt a lot more about the characters and what they’re going through.

Overall, while this book was certainly an interesting journey into an apocalyptic world, I will not be continuing the series. I can’t personally recommend this story to anyone, but I still think it’s fair to give it a shot. Who knows, this could be the book for you!

That’s a Wrap!

Thanks for stopping by, and happy reading!

Have you read this book before? What did you think? Do you have a book recommendation similar to this one? Feel free to share in the comments!

If you’d like to see other reviews of mine, feel free to check out my blog homepage or my GoodReads. You can also follow my GoodReads reviews here. There are some great binge-worthy books on there!

Have a great day!

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