Review: After The End by Amy Plum

Book Description:
She’s searching for answers to her past. They’re hunting her to save their future.

World War III has left the world ravaged by nuclear radiation. A lucky few escaped to the Alaskan wilderness. They've survived for the last thirty years by living off the land, being one with nature, and hiding from whoever else might still be out there.
At least, this is what Juneau has been told her entire life.

When Juneau returns from a hunting trip to discover that everyone in her clan has vanished, she sets off to find them. Leaving the boundaries of their land for the very first time, she learns something horrifying: There never was a war. Cities were never destroyed. The world is intact. Everything was a lie.

Now Juneau is adrift in a modern-day world she never knew existed. But while she's trying to find a way to rescue her friends and family, someone else is looking for her. Someone who knows the extraordinary truth about the secrets of her past.

My Thoughts:
This book is terrible. I don't understand the hype at all. Maybe because I didn't finish it. I only made it about halfway through before I just gave up completely.

The premise sounds right up my alley. Living in a survivalist community after WWIII? Check. Finding out that community is a LIE? Check - sweeeet! A girl who is being hunted for Important Reasons? YYeeeesssss.

But then I started the book. And it's terrible. Oh, so terrible. The longer I read, the harder it got for me to suspend my disbelief at the premise in general. Maybe if Plum had tried to make it less of a sci-fi book it would have been pulled off a little better. Or maybe if it hadn't skipped from Juneau to Miles' POV so often, maybe that would have helped. But no. Miles and Juneau sound exactly the same, by the way, and the only way I could tell them apart was their use of pronouns and the fact that their chapters had their name written above it. Thank goodness.

The Yara thing got weird and random and I just wasn't interested anymore.

I would have loved a survivalist type book. Even a book with the plot of Shyamalan's The Village. But this book? Big disappointment. Broke my little heart.