Kelly deVos

Don’t miss the exhilarating new novel from the author of Fat Girl on a Plane, featuring a fierce, bold heroine who will fight for her family and do whatever it takes to survive. Fans of Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life As We Knew It series and Rick Yancey’s The 5th Wave series will cheer for this fast-paced, near-future thrill ride. If you’re going through hell…keep going. Seventeen-year-old coder Jinx Marshall grew up spending weekends drilling with her paranoid dad for a doomsday she’s sure will never come. She’s an expert on self-heating meal rations, Krav Maga and extracting water from a barrel cactus. Now that her parents are divorced, she’s ready to relax. Her big plans include making it to level 99 in her favorite MMORPG and spending the weekend with her new hunky stepbrother, Toby. But all that disaster training comes in handy when an explosion traps her in a burning building. Stuck leading her headstrong stepsister, MacKenna, and her precocious little brother, Charles, to safety, Jinx gets them out alive only to discover the explosion is part of a pattern of violence erupting all over the country. Even worse, Jinx’s dad stands accused of triggering the chaos. In a desperate attempt to evade paramilitary forces and vigilantes, Jinx and her siblings find Toby and make a break for Mexico. With seemingly the whole world working against them, they’ve got to get along and search for the truth about the attacks—and about each other. But if they can survive, will there be anything left worth surviving for?

Day Zero

Lacy W

You can find this review and others like it at aravenclawlibraryx.wordpress.com

A special thank you goes out to Netgalley and Inkyard Press for giving me an opportunity to read this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

tw: bombings, graphic depictions of death, death (including child death)

I’m really quite disappointed by this book. I truly thought it was going to be something different than what it was. I expected some truly thrilling dystopia or at the very least, some action/adventure but I didn’t get that at all. I had to go back and read the synopsis of this book because I write out my reviews and then type them out later. I couldn’t remember what this book was about. That’s how unremarkable this book was. I am not trying to be mean at all but when I don’t remember what a book is about and have to look it up, that is not a good sign. 

One of my problems with this book was that I didn’t quite care of any of the characters. The main character, Jinx, was okay but I didn’t have any particular feelings for her. I didn’t bond with her even though she shared similar interests with me, such as being a gamer and interest in martial arts. She was just alright. *shrugs shoulders*

As for the other characters, they were meh. They were just there. They didn’t push the story forward. I couldn’t stand Mackenna, Jinx’s stepsister, for most of the book. She was whiny, nossy and very demanding along with being incredibly demeaning. She never listened to Jinx when it came to survival, even though Jinx clearly knew what she was talking about when it came to that. I was frustrated with her. The only positive about her was she was interested in politics, which you don’t see a lot of in young adults, especially for girls. 

The political parties, Spark and Opposition, confused me and they were a big part of the plot of this book. I think the Opposition was bad but I really have no idea. I just got this big paragraph about the history of the Spark and Opposition. I didn’t retain much of it so during the whole book, I was pretty confused. It’s unfortunate because it would have been such a cool thing but when you info dump things like that, the reader isn’t going to get the information they need for the story to make sense. 

One last thing that bugged me about this book was the potential love interest. I won’t say who it was is as to not spoil it for anybody wanting to read the book. Although, when I went to look up the synopsis of this book to do this review, the author herself named the love interest so I guess you all can find it on the Goodreads page if you truly want to know. But wow, did it feel incredibly forced. Jinx and the love interest had no real chemistry and barely knew each other. Why can’t there be a young adult action/adventure/dystopia book without a love interest? It’s so very tiring. 

Okay, so overall, this wasn’t the worst book I’ve read but as you all could tell, I had a lot of problems with it. However, this book piqued my interest just enough that I might (and that’s a big miiiiiight) read the second book. I’m curious to know how it all will end. As for recommendations, if the problems I listed don’t bother you or they actually appeal to you (I won’t judge you, pinky promise), then have at it. Maybe this book will be right for you. It just wasn’t right for me.

Kelly Devos

Don't miss the exhilarating new novel from the author of Fat Girl on a Plane, featuring a fierce, bold heroine who will fight for her family and do whatever it takes to survive. Fans of Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It series and Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave series will cheer for this fast-paced, near-future thrill ride. If you're going through hell...keep going. Seventeen-year-old coder Jinx Marshall grew up spending weekends drilling with her paranoid dad for a doomsday she's sure will never come. She's an expert on self-heating meal rations, Krav Maga and extracting water from a barrel cactus. Now that her parents are divorced, she's ready to relax. Her big plans include making it to level 99 in her favorite MMORPG and spending the weekend with her new hunky stepbrother, Tyrell. But all that disaster training comes in handy when an explosion traps her in a burning building. Stuck leading her headstrong stepsister, Makeeba, and her precocious little brother, Charles, to safety, Jinx gets them out alive only to discover the explosion is part of a pattern of violence erupting all over the country. Even worse, Jinx's dad stands accused of triggering the chaos. In a desperate attempt to evade paramilitary forces and vigilantes, Jinx and her siblings find Tyrell and make a break for Mexico. With seemingly the whole world working against them, they've got to get along and search for the truth about the attacks--and about each other. But if they can survive, will there be anything left worth surviving for?

Leelynn Brady

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley, Harlequin Presents, and Inkyard Press for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.

This technically should have been my second DeVos book but I still haven’t gotten to my Fat Girl on a Plane ARC (oops) so this is going to be my first book. And honestly, I’m not disappointed with it. I like the snark that I got from Jinx and I could totally feel where she’s coming from on the personal side of things.

I guess I could be a little bit more specific on that, oops.

We first meet Jinx at high school, where her stepsister is in her history class and her mother is the teacher. Clearly this is some time in the future, but things haven’t been okay because while their technology seems advanced, it’s not working at 100% capacity. There’s also been really major budget cuts that even the high school population seems to be negatively affected by it. To the point that I’m actually really surprised by it.



But not even just that. Apparently Jinx’s dad – her biological dad – is some sort of conspiracy theorist that was able to bring the country to its knees by creating a code that just messed up everything. He didn’t do it to be malicious, but to show that that technology could be easily hacked and affected, and that everyone needs to be ready for the end of the world. Since he wrote his survival manual and published it though, the world kept going on… business as usual.

But he was right. Things were going to end as we knew it, and I don’t think anyone was as prepared as they should have been.



The synopsis for this novel said that fans of The 5th Wave would like this novel. I personally only read the first book (The 5th Wave) and I loved it. So, I guess they were on the nose with that. I did really like this novel, and I was pretty proud of Jinx for remembering what her father taught her, even if she didn’t want to think about how that period in her life was what led to her family’s end. It may have been etched in her brain with all the drills and practice runs that they did, but for her to actually execute them was impressive to me. I’m so curious about how this duology will end, and I’m glad that I finally got to read a DeVos book.

Day Zero

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