Fast and enjoyable apocalyptic read, nice action stream and Sherry is a very good protagonist. ( )

The Other Life by Susanne Winnacker was a fast and entertaining read. This is a YA dystopian story that has Sherry, the main character emerge from her family’s bunker after three years. She and her father are searching for food to keep themselves and the rest of the family going. Why were they living in an underground bunker? To keep themselves safe from the infected, zombie like people that roam the countryside.

Sherry and her father are attacked and her father is carried off while Sherry is saved by another survivor, Joshua. After the two of them rescue Sherry’s father and gather the rest of her family, Joshua takes them to Safe Haven, where a group of survivors are living. Unfortunately by the end of the book, Safe Haven isn’t safe anymore and Sherry and her friends must find somewhere else to live. Also rumors reach them that there could be a cure for this zombie-like disease but that the government is keeping it to themselves while they study the effects of the disease with the idea of using it to develop indestructible soldiers.

While the book ended abruptly and definitely with a cliff-hanger, I did enjoy the story and look forward to reading the next book to see what is going to happen to these survivors next. Of course, being a YA book, there was an immediate romance between Sherry and Joshua, which I would have preferred developed a little more slowly, but after being locked up for three years in a bunker, I guess any teenager would fall for the first likely candidate. ( )

This honestly could have been a five star book. It was actually that good. Almost everything about this book is perfect. I only had a couple of problems with it. For one, it was way too short. Everything just happened way too fast. There could have been so much more. I also had a problem with the main character, Sherry. She just didn’t seem to really care about her grandmother at all. That just didn’t seem to come across as realistic. Other than those two things I had a huge problem with, everything else seemed great. I can’t wait to read book two, The Life Beyond, and continue on with this story. ( )

2.5 stars.

The Other Life had an interesting premise; people forced to go 'underground' due to an outbreak of the rabies virus. I enjoyed how the main character, Sherry, used numbers to show how long it had been since she'd seen the ocean, eaten chocolate, etc. Instead of 3 months, she would use 90 days, or ____ number of minutes. I thought it was fun.

The first 2/3 of the book was slow and I kept stopping because of words that, in my mind, were misspelled. It bugged the crap out of me. However, the pace and plot definitely picked up in the last fifty or so pages. The ending was excellent and I will probably read the next one because of it.

The reason I gave it such a low rating is because of the slow plot, thrown in romance, and annoying, one dimensional characters. I did see some excellent writing and think that Ms. Winnacker will get better as she goes along. She just needs to work on giving her characters depth. Sherry was annoying...the only one that mildly interested me was Geoffrey. His story was interesting...
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Far too short, not enough character depth but an alright plot. ( )