Review | Mad World: Sanctuary by Samaire Provost

Title: Mad World: Sanctuary by Samaire Provost
Series: Mad World #2
Genre: YA - Horror
Publication: August 30th 2012 by Creatspace
Format: E-book
Source: Chick Lit Plus
Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Synopsis: The year is 2017, and the Black Plague infection has swept across most of the United States, leaving death and chaos in its wake. Martial law is the rule rather than the exception, with outbreaks cropping up when they're least expected. Alyssa and her friends must not only battle outbreaks of the disease, but also find themselves pursued by government agents – men and women determined to track them down at any cost.

Fleeing north to the fabled Sanctuary, Alyssa, Jacob, DeAndre, Caitlyn, Risa and Luke face disturbing ordeals and terrible tragedy as they encounter unbelievable situations in their struggle to reach safety. Using their skills and wits in their fight to survive against ever worsening odds, they weather hardship, betrayal, and the ever-present specter of death as they flee north, all the while vowing to protect one another – and most of all their precious 5-year-old Luke, from a world gone mad.

Sanctuary, the second installment in the Mad World series, is a heart-rending adventure of astonishing revelations, tragic discoveries, agonizing separations and devastating losses that test these friends to their limits. With heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat suspense at every turn, this is a story you will not be able to put down.

Thoughts: After finishing off the first book in this series, Mad World: Epidemic, I was excited to see the story continued, especially since I don't usually read books from a series right after another. Even though the story took place several years later, Mad World: Sanctuary turned out to be disappointing, enough that I am not sure if I want to continue the series after all.

At the beginning, we are tossed back into the story, with a few reminders here and there about the previous book that I felt were more awkward than necessary. The story picks up five years later with the same characters and a few changes in their lives. They are now traveling with a five year old boy who is half zombie (or something) and they have all paired up as couples except for the youngest girl. Also, they have to constantly hide from the government in order to keep Luke (the zombie-child.) While I expected some more action packed events full of zombies, now that the outbreak was five years + in, the amount of zombies was about the same as in the first book. While one scene does stand out because there are numerous zombies involved, the horror scenes were more of the same and not really exciting or creepy.

The story doesn't develop much either, since the characters spend the book just re-locating from one place to another. Instead we get similar fight scenes, a lot of driving around in a van (and only having energy drinks or soda, which was also something that bugged me about the first one but I failed to mention in my review) and constantly being followed, although they don't come across anyone until the last third of the book. They manage to meet some new people but the predicaments sounded way too familiar (almost like some of the volumes of The Walking Dead, actually) so I wasn't really entertained.

The only thing that redeemed this book for me, in fact, was the ending because there is a twist I didn't see coming, which turns into a cliffhanger of an ending. So if I want to know what's in store for these characters, I would have to read the next book and I am just not interested. Overall, I found this to be a weak filler of a book to continue the series without adding anything significant to the story until the very end.