Synopsis

Birmingham, Alabama, has lost all power. Its streets are jammed with cars that won’t start and its airport is engulfed in flames from burning planes. All communications—cell phones, computers, even radios—are silent. Every home and business is dark. Is it a natural disaster, a terrorist attack, or something far worse?

In the face of a crisis that sweeps an entire high-tech planet back to a time before electricity, the Branning family faces a choice. Will they hoard their possessions in order to survive—or trust God to provide as they share their resources with those around them? Yesterday’s world is gone. Family and community are all that remain. And the outage is revealing the worst in some.

Desperation can be dangerous—especially when a killer lives among them.

(via Amazon)

Review

*TRIGGER WARNING* – there is murder, including that of a child. You only witness one murder happen however that is not the child. There is a fear of and an attempted sexual assault in one scene, but it does not actually happen. Due to the dire circumstances, there is violence throughout and some racist characters (there are no racist slurs or anything like that though).

I quite literally just finished this book, and I am reeling from the story. Usually, I give myself a bit of a break in between finishing a book and writing the review but I feel the NEED to write this sooner rather than later.

What if all technology and the conveniences it offers came to a grinding halt in a matter of seconds? Leading the world to enter a second dark age without electricity and power. This story, set in the suburbs of Alabama, tries to answer that question.

The deeper meanings within this book are where it shines the most. Being set in the USA, there is a very real attitude of egotism and overconfidence in one’s situation, that prevails in the beginning of the book. As time goes on and the dire and hopeless situation begins to feel more and more permanent, everyone is forced to change their mindsets or completely drown in their sorrows. Even the Christian community in this book struggle with separating themselves from the world they were successful in only days prior to the incident. When the world goes dark and people begin feeling desperate, you quickly realize how volatile the situation can become. This book is all about how God allows certain things to happen in order to carve us into the people we were meant to be. After all, sometimes we have to be enclosed in darkness to see the tiny flame from a candle.

The characters in this book, particularly the main Branning family I found repulsive and infuriating at times. There is a multi-POV layout in which you see through the eyes of the eldest daughter Deni, the father Doug, and the mother Kay. This book almost ended up on my DNR list several times, but I took a step back from my emotions and realized the full extent of the situation the characters found themselves in. I was humbled when I realized I would act very similarly if I was thrust into what felt like the wild west days within a day. Where you could no longer just drive to the store to get food since your vehicle is fried, and the store was ransacked by the same people you thought you trusted in your community. Or those who were just too desperate to feed their families. Each member of society had their own vices they were forced to handle dead on, lest whole families and community suffer the consequences.

The characters fully reap what the sow in this book, so it felt satisfying when they found themselves in predicaments due to their own stupid decisions. This helped me get through the infuriating personalities of some of the main characters, one prime example being Deni.

As mentioned, Deni is the eldest daughter of the Branning family. She is 22 years old and fresh off the plane back home from Washington DC. She left behind her life in the big city in which she had dreams of becoming a journalist for a big TV network and marrying someone up in the government. Right off the bat, she has a spoiled brat mentality in which she thinks everyone back in her hometown are nothing but uneducated hicks who are stuck in the past. Basically, she is not too thrilled to be stuck there after the blackout occurs. The majority of book is spent with her complaining about their situation and feeling sorry for herself, while simultaneously viewing herself as better than everyone around her due to her “sophisticated” education. All she is worried about is figuring out a way to make it back to Washington DC to be with her fiancée Craig. Not making sure they have enough food or water to survive as long as possible. This tunnel vision causes her to make some very questionable and poor decision that she ultimately regrets. These events she finds herself in, is what causes her to have the greatest character development in the book. She not only has a coming to Jesus moment, but she figures out the simple life can mean way more when you have love, than being surrounded by rich and powerful people that could not care less about you.

Being the first book in a series of four in the Restoration series, I do plan on reading the next one. I will probably take a break in between however. This book is such an emotional roller-coaster that may make you a bit paranoid how easily this dystopian scenario could happen to you. The author clearly did her research due to certain things the characters would do in order to purify water or grow their own food that just makes sense. Maybe we could all learn something from a book like this.

If you do not mind the heavy Christian themes and love an apocalyptic type of setting and, this may be a book for you! This felt like watching some sort of messed up social experiment of how quickly and easily people break under severe pressure.