I'm finding it hard to give a review about this book for two reasons. At first, I really enjoyed the first part of the book but found myself skipping pages towards the end.

While the story starts quite promising, it created some expectations (totally objective) that fell flat later on. I was expecting something deeper, exploring subjects like coming-of-age in a hostile world but ended up being a mix of Resident Evil and Walking Dead. Now, don't get me wrong, I love those but I enjoy watching the films/series, not reading them. It takes a special kind of effort to make each gore scene feel unique and not repetitive in such a context, which I feel the author didn't deliver.

As for the characters, again, what felt like a promising coming-of-age story just ended up reading about a teenager that went through hell in a two-dimensional fashion. Even her going down the memory lane in an attempt to add depth to her character, it was done in a way that delivered a wannabe rather than a heroine.

Didn't keep my attention while reading it and I just found myself not enjoying it at all while I was reading it. Possibly for someone else but definitely not for me at all.

I have to be honest, I struggled with and did not fully finish this one. It has an interesting premise and a lot of promise. The characters are well written but is is a painfully bleak dystopian tale and not really my cup of tea. The intense graphic violence is disturbing but expected in the horror genre but being mostly focused on children used as a test subjects I found it too unsettling to read for extended periods of time and while Celeste is an optimistic and hopeful character and her tight knit relationship with her father was endearing, it was not nearly enough to bright this dark tragic nightmare of a novel much at all. Also the actin scenes were disorienting, without names or titles I had a hard time guessing who was speaking half the time. Celeste’s father, the villain, a doctor, a guard? It was all just too much to decipher. This might be a suitable choice for someone with a more desensitized view of horror fiction but sadly I can’t say it was a good fit for reading options for myself.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for being able to read this as an ARC. These are my honest reviews.
Honestly was not my favorite survivor style book. I did read this pretty quickly as I was interested in what was happening. I loved the scenery descriptions and the stories but the Main character Celeste was just annoying. I feel like she had no skill that should have allowed her to survive. If we learned one thing from Zombieland its to double tap!

When I started this book I loved it, it reminded me very much of “the last of us” a father and daughter surviving alone in the woods, there’s talk about a sickness, but that's where things start losing me, do the people with the sickness die?, transform in zombies, wolfs or something of the sort?, we are teased with a semi answer but not a full one… I wanted a clear answer of what the sickness was and how did it affect people... without spoilers, maybe you'll like it, but it wasn't for me...

A little while after this Celeste, the girl, starts her travel looking for people… there’s so much violence and action that I got lost in the action… and Celeste, goes from a clumsy teen to an expert in fighting… other thing that bothered me was her attitude with food, her father tried to teach her to hunt and save resources but she just waste and eat until full… is that the way to go?…

I am sorry I didn't connect with Celeste, and she annoyed me… at first she survived with more luck than skill and then suddenly she was the ultimate survivor…

Thank you NetGalley for the free ARC and this is my honest opinion.

Normally I love a post apocalyptic dystopian novel ad I was initially sucked in at the beginning of the book with the relationship between Celeste and her father and the anticipation of the search for more family. However, having her set out on the adventure alone with a wolf pup (not believable), becoming this extraordinary fighter ( not believable) and survive all the fights( way too many for my liking) ( also unbelievable) made me dislike the story completely. No way. The last 20% I skimmed because it was just terrible descriptions of battles, and what….this is only book 1. It was terrible.

Once I cracked this book open, I had a hard time taking a break from reading.
I absolutely love end of the world/plague survival stories, and this one was quite good. From the mountains, to the cities, there was always action and intense scenes.
The only downside was the character Celeste. She went from being a decent survivalist, to being total crap at everything, to hallucinating people all the time, to suddenly having hand to hand combat skills. She was a frustrating character and I found myself wishing she would just be killed off. Also, can you please double tap your enemies in the head to ensure they are actually dead?!

Thank you to NetGalley, Tyler W.D. Stewart, and Supposed Crimes Publishing for a copy.