Review: After the Flood by Kassandra Montag

When I saw the gorgeous early proof copy of this book I could not stop myself from requesting a copy of it from the publisher. Although this is normally not a book I would choose to read by myself, as I pretty much never read any adult books, I wanted to give it a try. Because it seemed like it would be exciting too.

I was wrong. And I can't help but truly regret reading this book. Which makes my heart hurt a little. But gosh, how bad this one was. It almost killed me to finish it. But finish it I did. Felt like it lasted forever. Sigh. Giving it two stars, though, because even though I disliked it so, I did not feel that much hate towards it.

There is so much I wish to share about this book. And so much I'm not going to mention at all. But sadly, this review will not be very positive. At all. Because I did not like it. I so didn't like the characters. I very much did not like them. This story bothered me so many times. And the writing was so awful it was torture to read through the rest of it. But I read it all. Because it was a gorgeous print copy that I had gotten to read and review. And also because I wanted to know how everything would end. Because although I did not like the characters at all, I did like the world building. I liked that it took place in a future world, where the world has flooded. There is water almost everywhere. It was also so much like the movie Waterworld and the book Pacifica.

And because of that I was expecting this book to be pretty amazing too. I ended up being every kind of disappointed. I will try not to post too many spoilers. But I have so many feelings about this book, all of them negative, and I need to share it all. I wish I could have loved this book. But it was so very much not a book for me at all. Which probably means I should say that it was me, not the book, but ha. That is not how I work. I did not like the book, because to me, this book was all kinds of terrible. Will write about it all.

This story is told from the point of view of Myra. She is a thirty-something mother of two. She grew up in this world of flooding, although for at least twenty years of her life she lived pretty good, going to school, having internet, having all of it. But then another flood came and destroyed pretty much everything. I liked reading about this world, as I found it to be interesting and somewhat exciting at times. But there was too little of it all, honestly. This book focused way too much on Myra and her thoughts. And not in a good way.

Myra have two children. But one of them is not with her. Because years ago, when her daughter was five years old and Myra was pregnant with girl number two, their baby father stole Row and went away on a boat, leaving pregnant Myra alone with her grandfather. It has now been, I think, six or seven years since then. It was hard to tell, because times are barely mentioned. Myra went on a boat her grandfather was building for them, to stay safe. She had her baby, Pearl. And she never saw the rest of her family again.

And I did feel for her because of this. It must have been so painful to have your child taken away by your husband, losing them both. But my gosh, I did not care for this woman at all. She was not a nice person. It seemed like she had been taking so so badly care of her other daughter ever since she was born. Not caring for her the way she should have. And I did not like it one bit. I also did not like Myra as a person, when they finally met other people after years of them being alone. She was so not great to read about.

This book tells a story on the water. In the beginning Myra finds out that her missing child is still alive, but way across the ocean from her. And she will do anything to find her again. I found the reason for why she found this out to be way too convenient, to be honest. A raider finds them, he is going to take them in, but he is wearing the girl's necklace. Whom Myra has heart nothing about since she disappeared. There was also mention of this guy having raped the girl, probably aged eleven at the time. Yeah. It was so not good.

And so this book is about Myra taking her living six year old girl with her across the ocean for months to search for her missing child. The child she seems to care much more about. Which was a little painful to read about. They are able to join a crew on their boat, which was somewhat interesting to read about. But I did not care for this crew at all. Myra starts sleeping with the captain right away, for stupid reasons. Sigh. While she had gotten to know a different man for weeks before, that she has some real feelings for. Ugh.

The crew of the boat was simply there. They weren't really interesting to read about at all. The captain is a drunk and a former raider. It was beyond boring. Yet Myra feels so bad for them all, though at the same time she is lying to them about where they are going. Which I thought was silly, honestly. There was not really that much happening in this book. Although it lasted forever and ever. This was about Myra and her daughter taking a journey to look for her other daughter. They see some things on the way, nothing huge.

And then the ending of the book. I just. What. It was beyond silly and rushed and just full of wishful things that came true. It was not realistic at all. There is a fighting scene. It was not written well; was all kinds of messy. People died. I did not care one bit. Myra is a mess in the whole book. She was supposedly getting better and better. I did not agree or see that. She was always a mess. I so wish I had loved this one. But it was impossible. The ending was too much, ha. And not good at all, despite this book thinking that it was.

Although most of my dislike for this book was because of the characters and the bad writing, it was also because of how messy I felt like this book was. I really truly did not like the writing at all. It described way too much, and not in a good way. Myra was always comparing every single thing to certain types of fish. Even while having sex. Yuck. And my god, the two sex scenes that were written down. They were so bad. No heat, no passion, only bad writing. It bothered me. The writing of this whole book was simply so awful.

I really wish I could have had better things to say about this book. But I don't have that. As there was not much about this story that I cared for. It is only a two star because I managed to finish it. Because of the world that I somewhat enjoyed. The rest of the book was a solid one star for me. It do make me sad, but yeah. After the Flood was not a good book. Not for me. I'm sure there are others who will enjoy it as there always is. Huge thank you to Natasha at the UK publisher for sending me a free copy to read and review.

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