Review: Autumn in the City of Angels by Kirby Howell

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Published April 14th 2013 by Streetlights Publishing

My Rating: 4 Stars

Source: Self-Purchased

From Goodreads:

A plague of epic proportion sweeps the globe, leaving less than one percent of the world’s population immune. Among the living is Autumn Winters, the teenage daughter of a famous actress. When Autumn’s parents don’t come home and the city is overtaken by a dangerous faction, she goes into hiding with a small group of underground survivors. They’re led by a mysterious young man who harbors an unearthly secret, and with whom Autumn feels a deep connection. Autumn in the City of Angels is the first novel in a series, followed by Autumn in the Dark Meadows and Autumn in the City of Lights.

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My Review:

I really liked this book, so I will start there. But there was a moment during this book that I nearly rage-quit, hence the one star deduction. The book starts out great, and quite realistic. In so many of the books of the dystopian genre, the main character suffers some calamity, and then five minutes later is building a shelter and making soup out of tree bark. But not our Autumn, she is pretty much feeling the same way any of us would in an end-of-the-world situation: “Oh crap, now what?”. I mean, of course she eventually gets her act together, because a book in which the protagonist loses their mind and promptly dies would not garner a ton of readers. But she does so in a much more realistic way than a lot of other books I’ve read.

I was loving the side characters too, and her relationships with them. And then, there was a plot twist. Kudos to the authors for me totally not seeing that one coming in any capacity, but I didn’t love it. It made the book go from something you could kind of see happening for real (plague, people being awful, looking for safety) to something that was so completely unbelievable. I stopped reading for a few minutes and seriously considered if I wanted to continue. But I had already gotten about halfway through, and was invested in the characters, so along I chugged.

I am glad I did, because the rest of the book was really good. The ending was pretty fantastic too, setting up the next book amazingly. Once I got past the shock of the plot twist, I was okay again, but I assume the twist will throw a lot of readers off. So while I definitely recommend this book, if you are seeking pure realistic dystopia, this may not be ideal.