Mary Miller

Fourteen-year-old Jess' beliefs falter when her evangelical father packs up the family, including a secretly pregnant older sister and a long-suffering mother, to travel across the country and save souls ahead of the anticipated end of the world.

The Last Days of California: A Novel

Colton Ray

I really, really wanted to like this book. The premise sounded awesome. But the execution was botched horribly.

1) The narrator goes on and on about how she's not nearly as pretty as her older sister, yet almost every single male character she meets is just dying to jump in her pants. What?

2) Parents that are fundamentalist enough to drive across the country for Armageddon would never tolerate their preteen daughters drinking and sleeping around openly. It's like the author never met any real fundamentalists. My parents were. Hint: they were pretty strict.

3) Never once did I believe that any of these characters truly believed Armageddon was going to take place. There is a palpable lack of tension or any kind of emotion. It's supposed to be the end of the world, so why does no one seem to give a shit?

4) None of these characters are remotely likable, and I didn't care if they never made it to California. The main character and her sister are both annoying and shallow. Her parents are shown as nothing more than fat, drunken slobs. The boys and men they run into on the road range from creepy to perverted. All the women are catty bitches, and all the men are pervy idiots.

The characterization was inconsistent, the plot was non-existent, the ending was so abrupt, I kept turning the page to see if that was really it. The writing and dialogue was average at best, though the conversations would slowly deviate into nonsense, and the pop culture references seemed forced and too much. The best scene happens early on in the book, and I kept waiting for it to tie into the plot. Nope, it was entirely pointless. Much like the rest of this book.

The best thing I could say about it was that it was mercifully short.

The Last Days of California: A Novel

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