It just didn't work for me.

Sorry for the extended delay in reviewing. I'm working on catching up on my backlist of netgalley reviews.

3.5 Stars

Remnants revolves around a group of teenage friends that band together for survival during an alien invasion in which over 99% of the population was abducted and they are what remains.

The friends battle the aliens, meeting new people along the way, and discover that they are more than just the naive kids they were days before.

The aliens themselves were interesting and I really liked the storyline. However, it was in many ways quite cliche and was unnecessarily long.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me this copy in exchange for an honest review.

*I received a free copy of this ebook through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I tried. I promise I tried. I made it to 10% before I started skimming, telling myself that I to keep going because I had received a copy for review. At 15%, I couldn't do it anymore. I used to make myself finish every book I started, but then I realized something: Life is too short to read books you don't like. And really, Remnants proves that, since most of the population disappeared.

It felt like it was supposed to be a Goonies vs. Aliens type of book, but it didn't work for me. I didn't find any of the characters likable. (For the record, I only met four: Darrel, Maggy, Felix, and Jacob.) Something about the writing failed to capture me as well.

The book takes place in the future. Far enough that teenagers have no idea what a cul-de-sac is (and debate what the actual word is) and that everyone has asthma due to poor air quality. But not far enough that it actually feels like the future aside from these little tidbits of information thrown in here and there to remind me it's in the future.

It just didn't work for me.

Note: Swearing, including f words.

Remnants is the first book in the Remnants trilogy. It is set after an alien (or should i say alion (that is explained in the book)) invasion. We follow 2 groups of main characters through different POV's. Maggy, Darrel and Felix start off together in Bellingham and are forced to grow up in unexpected ways while trying to get to relative safety.

Along the way the group encounter many obstacles, whether they are alion or human, as well as many setbacks. It is crazy to think that the entire novel is set over 8 - 10 days and how much the characters are forced become individuals that ideally they would have never had to be.

Personally, I found this to be the most realistic alien invasion novel that I have ever read. Ever. How they went about the start of the invasion was more fiction than fact in my mind, but after the initial invasion, I would not be surprised if we actually retaliated like they do in Remnants.

The alions are absolutely crazy. I was reading this in the dark and boy was that a wrong decision! I definitely felt the fear that Maggy, Darrel and Felix were feeling and could see myself making the same decisions that they were making during the course of the novel.

An amazing first book in this trilogy and I cannot wait to see how Hennessy is planning on following up on it.