Due to a passing in the family a few years ago and my subsequent health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for years after the bereavement. Thank you for the opportunity.

I love books about pandemics. In this one, people are dying from a drug-resistant bacteria, which is an excellent premise. I felt the governmental interactions were too formulaic and didn’t give us any ethics to ponder. I thought that this book needed more background in general and more science-related explanations (even an info dump would be fine). I thought the prose was a little rough around the edges and needed more attention and polishing.

I am grateful to the author and NetGalley for giving me access to this book.

I will not be able to review this book. I started it, but I just found myself struggling to connect with the characters and the plot. I didn't realize this was a series, so I think I need to spend some time reading the other books. first. I will try again another time, hopefully.

This was thankfully a quick read.
The story was over simplified and the characters seemed to except any thing that occurred making them feel under developed.
It could have been so much better.

Set in a dystopian society following a drug resistant 'pandemic' this book follows Rory and her father who are living pretty well off the grid. Her mother had been at the forefront of the battle against the developing resitance to antibiotics before succumbing to a drug resistant infection and dying.
Now suddenly there are two people who appear at the farm and Rory and her father flee with them.
I found the story a little contrived but with a good pace and interesting concept in today's society of increasing drug resistant microbial strains.
The book may suit a young adult reader though I found it an easy and enjoyable read.

Great first book! Well written and easy to follow. The characters are great and the story was entertaining. The only thing I would change is the insta-love between Rory and NAVY. Maybe if they’d had a little more time together before they fell in love, it seemed like they’d barely had enough time together to even get to know each other. Otherwise it’s a great first novel!

An interesting Romance/Sci-fi novel set in a world where antibiotics no longer work, and scientists are desperately searching for a cure to the pandemic that follows.
Rory is a young scientist who lives on a rural farm with her father, after her mother (fairly recently) succumbed to the disease ravaging their world. She's clearly brilliant within her field of study, and an interesting main character who I found to be both 'real' and likeable - strong but doubtful of her own abilities, intelligent but aware of her own limitations.
There were several surprising twists and turns in this book, but overall it felt... rushed. The romance was almost immediate and therefore felt unrealistic, and the plot often jumped through periods of time in order to expedite the timeline, However, that's not to say it wasn't an enjoyable read.
If you're looking for a short, interesting sci-fi romance with some great characters, then Resistant is the book for you.

Rory is a scientist and lives on a farm with her father. There is a bacteria that is antibiotic resistant and lots of people have died. Navy was experimented on and has blue covering half his face, arms and torso. He is a former SEAL and is looking for Rory to protect her and take her to a group that is working on a cure. The only problem, a General also has people working on a cure but wants to only give it to certain people. When Rory finds out Navy and her father has been keeping things from her, can she forgive them?
This is sort of in the future and there’s a lot of confusing medical words. Action and secrets. To people trying to save the world fall in love. All the characters dialogue ran together, but hopefully that will be fixed in the published version. I was lost most of the time but it still had me hooked.

* Voluntarily read and reviewed this for Netgalley *

Thank you to NetGalley, SparkPress, and Rachael Sparks for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Initially, when this popped up on my dashboard on NetGalley, I think I thought it was a young adult novel, mostly because of the cover. It has that vibe. But the listed genres are romance and sci-fi. But having thought it was YA based on the novel, I was very confused about the characters at first...until I realized oh, this is more of a new adult book. Okay, got it! That definitely changes things!

This aside, there is romance, yes. Pretty much instantly, and this actually makes the relationships and the characters feelings and actions toward each other feel very flat and unrealistic. There wasn't much build-up or development before the characters get together (there are a few relationships going on in this novel). While I love romance, this was just too unrealistic for me.

On another note, I love disease-related fiction. Some disease destroyed the population (Maze Runner, The Walking Dead, Delirium, Day 5 [Rooster Teeth TV Series]). Love that kind of dystopian/post-apocalyptic idea. BUT, 30% of the way through the novel and I still didn't quite get what exactly happened to the world. The science in the novel could be explained better as well as more interspersed.

Holistically, I think that this would be a better novel if it was further expanded. It's short enough that another 10k words definitely wouldn't hinder it. The relationship development between Rory/Navy and Army/AJ could be vastly improved, because by the end of the novel, I still felt nothing for either relationship because the development just wasn't present. I also found that the plot could be further developed as well, spending just a few more sentences on elaborating a scientific aspect, or making a scene a bit more vivid. It felt like the characters jumped from place to play, and just a bit more description from one place to another would be helpful, despite the fact that each new chapter/page break starts with a location name.

Overall I did like this book and found it easy to read. But once again, I wish there was a bit more depth to it, especially because it is for a new adult audience. New adult age can handle descriptions and science and more ante to spice up the romance!

Resistant is an action-packed, romantic, sci-fi thriller that takes you right to the cusp of what our world could look like with resulting climate effect and resistant bacterial infections. Rory, a young woman who lives with her father on a farm, has spent most of her life living in a world where resources are slim and most of the population has been decimated. She becomes the center of a cure of a resistant strain of bacteria as a result of her mother's work as a microbiologist. I felt each part of this story through the author's colorful descriptions; all the way to her encounter with General Kessler. The characters were all so interesting to read! The chemistry between Rory and a Navy SEAL, Navy, was electric and absolutely one of favorite love stories to read this year! This is a must-read for any lover of sci-fi romance. And, it's sure to bring you right into a possible reality for our planet.

The set up was intriguing, the world was described well, and I liked Rory as the MC. However, we are told that Rory is under 30, but her actions and the romance feel more like YA. Also, lots of things happen implausibly quickly when Rory is around, and Navy is always on hand to save her. No other character gets anything other than perfunctory dialogue, so I struggled to feel like the world was real.

It reminded me of the Parasitology books by Mira Grant.

I really enjoy scientific thrillers, and when you can combine that element with tech, futurism, and a well-crafted world and characters, you can't help but keep me hanging by my fingernails... Sparks has a great writing style, very engaging and easy to fall into. And it doesn't hurt that she created an original- and entirely plausible-feeling future that was disturbingly life-like and dark enough to haunt without being so much so that it left me grudgingly turning each page. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and will definitely keep her on my "to watch" list!

Thanks for the early review copy!

I recommend this novel to fans of science fiction. It has a interesting plot!

Thanks to NetGalley and Spark Press for the advance reader copy.
What happens when bacteria finally become resistant to all antibiotics? A major die off of people, for starters. This is the story of people trying to find a cure and one girl who finds herself gifted with the answer. She has to avoid government troops attempting to secure the cure for only those rich and powerful enough.
I enjoyed this book. The characters were well written and you could put yourself in their place.

Resistant by Rachael Sparks is a post apocalyptic novel describing the events of antibiotics failing.

Let’s go ahead and talk about my favorite aspect of this book: the characters. This is going to sound weird but I am absolutely in love with the fact that the author diverged away from the basic mold of characters that most people use in survival novels like this. All the characters, Byron, Persy, Rory, Army, Navy... they all had unique and intriguing character arcs and are definitely what carried this novel. They aren’t your basic, Hollywood, all gorgeous and super deadpan... they are badass af. Especially Rory, who was the star of the novel. She was a perfect balance of fierce and kind, loyal but smart, emotional but in control of her emotions as well. She’s definitely one of the best MCs I’ve read this year.

And Navy... so this is going to sound weird but I’ve literally read nearly 100 novels, and in every single one of them the love interest is always super gorgeous. Navy is the FIRST male interest that wasn’t... that was even described as ugly. And I still loved him. In fact, it just made him & Rory’s romance seem more real for me because I knew it wasn’t all sexual attraction or “omg i just can’t resist his face!!!!”. They literally loved each other for being each other. I’m obsessed with their romance.

That aside, the writing was subpar. I think it could have had a little more oomph in it, a little bit more emotion. I usually always highlight lines that I find pretty or relatable or just deep af and I did not highlight a single quote in this book. It was a lot of action, a lot of biology talk, but not a lot of life reflection or descriptions that really stuck to me. I guess for some people they might like this kind of straight-to-the-point writing but I like to be able to relate some of the situation back into my life, or be able to know what the character is feeling through metaphors that I can also apply to my own emotions.

That said this is purely an entertaining read. The plot holds itself nicely, I don’t have much to comment on it because it was easy to follow along but it was just kind of there if you feel what I mean.

This book won’t make you sit on the beach and reflect the future of humanity or your love life or anything of the sort. But I would definitely recommend it to people who are looking for a fast, no fuss, entertaining post apocalyptic read with great character arcs.

Sparks has written an ingenious and engrossing sci-fi novel. The plotline and characters are relevant to today. Worth the read!

I wanted to really love this book. Outbreak/disease fiction is my favourite kind, and at first I was a little surprised by how short this novel seemed in comparison to others of the same topic. I soon realised that the fact this book was so short was its downfall.

There was so much information to be processed in this book; characters themselves and their relationships, science, shady government, the resistance, etc. The conversation and dialogue was cheesy, cringe worthy and completely false and set up (such as Bryon going on about Rory's undergrad and masters, this sort of info could have been more seamlessly added into the narrative). The relationships between people were incredibly vapid and felt completely forced. This book moved incredibly fast which resulted in huge info dumps that seemed out of place, inherently two dimensional characters who had no substance that made you like them or drawn to them, and the pacing of the novel was so poor that a million things happened across two paragraphs where there should have been more information. I often feel that with the popularity of such novels, there is usually a repetition of plot lines and problems. In this case, it is the characters lives and the background of the world itself that makes each variety of outbreak fiction interesting and readable. This book however was barely readable. For example, when Rory's mother was revealed to be alive, and her friend AJ was kidnapped, both events seemed to be brought into the narrative and with no prior warning. It was almost as though Sparks had no idea what would happen until she wrote it, and then didn't go back through and edit so that the story line was more convoluted and intricate within the narrative, as opposed to being tacked on or smashed together. Overall it felt like there was so much missing in terms of character, story, and information, that Sparks deleted every other sentence she wrote or something.