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A review by rosamarie
Highway Bodies by Alison Evans
4.0
This was great! I'm a total sucker for zombie apocalypse shows and books. And the fact that Highway Bodies was set in Australia made this an even more exciting read. I love how the author illustrated perfectly the very primal struggles people in our technologically advanced society would face trying to meet basic human needs for survival without luxuries we take for granted such as supermarkets and the internet. The sense of isolation and helplessness was palpable, for example, when the characters weren't even sure where they were going without access to Google Maps and in the absence of readily available paper road maps. The fact that there was limited information as to the cause or extent of the epidemic also ensured that the reader more acutely felt the character's panic at not knowing what was going on. I also love how apocalypse novels allow an author to explore human behaviour in a lawless environment.
My only complaint was the way the gender diversity element of the book was so explicitly forced into the text rather than just implicitly being there. It felt like the author wanted to make sure every letter in the LGBTQIAP+ acronym was represented and that the reader was clearly told which character fell into which category. For me, it really detracted from the flow of the book and could have been included in a more natural fashion rather than a random, info dump sentence from one character to another.
My only complaint was the way the gender diversity element of the book was so explicitly forced into the text rather than just implicitly being there. It felt like the author wanted to make sure every letter in the LGBTQIAP+ acronym was represented and that the reader was clearly told which character fell into which category. For me, it really detracted from the flow of the book and could have been included in a more natural fashion rather than a random, info dump sentence from one character to another.