Review Detail

2.9 4
Young Adult Fiction 224
Good Read, If Not Especially Original
Overall rating
 
3.3
Plot
 
N/A
Characters
 
N/A
Writing Style
 
N/A
Illustrations/Photos (if applicable)
 
N/A
Reading this, I could not help but think about one of my favorite guilty pleasure movies, Blast from the Past. If Adam had come up to a world of zombies aka weepers, they would be pretty similar. Ha. Anyway, the whole coming up out of the bunker device creates a nice time lapse so the characters can emerge into a wholly unknown world, as happens in The Walking Dead with the MC waking up out of a coma. This allows for believable exposition to relate how the heck the world came to be this way. It's a good method.

Although this is YA, I thought it read a bit like middle grade. This is largely due to Sherry's voice. She just isn't an especially mature 15, which is hardly surprising since she's spent 1/5 of her life living in a bunker with just her family. Her social development and possibly her schooling have been limited for the last three years.

Sherry is not an especially strong heroine, but she's not entirely useless. She has skills, like knowing how to handle a gun, and she's fit, but she also has terrible aim and wastes bullets because she feels bad killing anything. In short, she's a believable girl, not falling into either the helpless or the kickass category.

Although not actually written in diary format, The Weepers read a bit like a diary. Sherry is obsessed with numbers and constantly relates how long it's been since she's done something, like felt the rain on her face. I actually liked this about her, although I imagine it probably irritated some, but it did make it feel like she was writing everything out and doing calculations. How else could she remember precisely how many days ago she last ate chicken?

I was worried about the romance in the book. I do get a bit tired of the fact that the heroine always seems to manage to find a hottie when the world is ending, but I suppose it might be believable (any port in a storm kind of thing). What saved it for me was the time frame, which I think was longer than it seemed as I read along and that they definitely didn't instalove. Besides, I really like Joshua, and how ruthless/realistic he is about his situation, which is precisely why he and his crew are still alive.

My rating is not any higher simply because I do not feel like The Weepers did much to set itself apart from the host of other titles with this same sort of story. It's a wholly enjoyable read, and I'll definitely read the next book, but I didn't spot anything especially original.
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