About The Book:
Title: Red Hill
Author: Jamie McGuire
Release Date: 1st October
When the world ends, can love survive?
For Scarlet, raising her two daughters alone makes fighting for tomorrow an everyday battle. Nathan has a wife, but can’t remember what it’s like to be in love; only his young daughter Zoe makes coming home worthwhile. Miranda’s biggest concern is whether her new VW Bug is big enough to carry her sister and their boyfriends on a weekend escape from college finals.
When reports of a widespread, deadly “outbreak” begin to surface, these ordinary people face extraordinary circumstances and suddenly their fates are intertwined. Recognizing they can’t outrun the danger, Scarlet, Nathan, and Miranda desperately seek shelter at the same secluded ranch, Red Hill. Emotions run high while old and new relationships are tested in the face of a terrifying enemy—an enemy who no longer remembers what it’s like to be human.
Set against the backdrop of a brilliantly realized apocalyptic world, love somehow finds a way to survive. But what happens when the one you’d die for becomes the one who could destroy you?
For Scarlet, raising her two daughters alone makes fighting for tomorrow an everyday battle. Nathan has a wife, but can’t remember what it’s like to be in love; only his young daughter Zoe makes coming home worthwhile. Miranda’s biggest concern is whether her new VW Bug is big enough to carry her sister and their boyfriends on a weekend escape from college finals.
When reports of a widespread, deadly “outbreak” begin to surface, these ordinary people face extraordinary circumstances and suddenly their fates are intertwined. Recognizing they can’t outrun the danger, Scarlet, Nathan, and Miranda desperately seek shelter at the same secluded ranch, Red Hill. Emotions run high while old and new relationships are tested in the face of a terrifying enemy—an enemy who no longer remembers what it’s like to be human.
Set against the backdrop of a brilliantly realized apocalyptic world, love somehow finds a way to survive. But what happens when the one you’d die for becomes the one who could destroy you?
My Thoughts:
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Red Hill was on my list of highly anticipated releases. I was looking forward to see how Jamie McGuire will handle writing in completely undiscovered by her genre and what fans of Beautiful Disaster, will say after reading such a different novel.
I was full of optimism, believing that McGuire wouldn’t have published something she knows won’t be in her readers’ taste. Writing post apocalyptic novel after focusing almost entirely on romance isn’t easy, especially when someone already has stable fan base, that clearly enjoys different literature category. On the contrary being an author who’s able to push readers out of their comfort zone and surprised them by being completely fixable is a risk that sometimes is worth the taking.
Unfortunately, for me McGuire totally flushed her chance down the toilet. I suppose she wanted the best, for herself – to push the limits as an author and try herself in something different, for publishers and media – to shock and gain new fans, and for her fans – to be finally able to do show them enjoyment in zombie novel.
Well, it didn’t work for me. As much as I liked her previous work, Red Hill, left me unsatisfied, bored and extremely tired.
Red Hill is like C class horror movie. Nothing unique or refreshing was thrown to the usual zombie sack, from one cliche to the other, from mutating virus, crazy scientists and biting to get infected, McGuire didn’t use any new twist to make her story more bearable. No, she just used every patent, I’ve already seen or read about. And as I completely understand that doing something new in this genre is really hard to achieve, I was clearly disappointed by her lack of creativity.
Also, there were this big plot holes, that didn’t make it any easier to understand why people acted the way they did. For example, story begins when Scarlet and her daughters start the next normal day in their lifes, when on the news, people talk about an epidemy in Europe, and complete chaos. The virus attacked Germany and the country changed into hell, people alternated into zombie like creatures, while USA citzens didn’t do anything at all. Scarlet confessed, she didn’t see any changes in US behavior. It was like nobody was paying attention to what was happening. The fact that airports were still working and people were still buying international flights really nailed it. I mean, who was so stupid to let people get infected in the Europe and then make it back to US to infect another country? Then in only a day all country is full of brainless zombies. People panic and kill each other and blah, blah (think of any zombie movie you’ve watched)
After being unsatisfied and bewildered by the apocalyptic part, I had my hopes in romance. But sadly, I was even more disappointed. Scarlet and Nathan met about 65-70% in, and almost immediately fell in love. I didn’t feel chemistry or anything. I didn’t even realized they already had feelings for each other when they had sex.
The novel ends in the stupidest way it could and epilogue made this story even more unrealistic. From ‘we are in hell’ things change to ‘lets start humanity from the beginning’ and ‘oh there will be few pink unicorns’.
Overall, Red Hill, killed a big part of me and my love for Jamie McGuire. I adore the decision to risking very much by publishing this novel, but I can’t comprehend why she chose this path. I fear, that most of McGuire fans will give this book four of five stars rating, not because it’s mind blowing book, that gave them everything they hoped for, but because of the author’s name. I observed this phenomenon with countless other writers and their fan base.
*ARC, provided by published via Edelweiss in exchange for honest review*
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