A review by neighbor_reads
The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly

1.0

This book was a bummer. There is a nugget of a good idea but the execution made me roll my eyes more than once. The novel starts off with a decent prologue to spike interest, and then things get weird. I kept flipping to the front cover that says "a thriller" to remind myself of what it was because after the prologue, a whole lot of nothing happens for 100 pages. Let's talk about the creatures in this book and introduce all their quirks/weaknesses now so when the heroine does something utterly ridiculous later on, it might make a tiny bit more sense. Then when things do get exciting, the writing is weak. Instead of creating tension, the author relies on a TON of exclamation points, ellipses, and pauses. Because everything is more exciting with an exclamation point! Right?! Ugh. No tension, and you can guess who is going to make it by the second scene.

It seemed that the author knew all of us would be making Jurassic park comparisons, so he actually has a character bring it up in dialogue! Why?! Make me shake my head.

I originally purchased this book for a beach trip and I thought it was too silly even as a beach read. I was just disappointed overall.