A review by bluejayreads
The Deadly Nightshade by Justine Ashford

Did not finish book.
It’s been so long that I can’t actually remember why this ended up on my to-read list. I guess it was a sort of throwback to the dystopian/post-apocalyptic books I loved back in high school. And maybe I saw something good about it online? Who knows, it’s been there for a while. 

I didn’t end up finishing it, mainly because it reminded me too much of the books published back when I was in high school – cashing in on a trend, generic and lifeless and formulaic. 

If you tried to come up with the most generic post-apocalyptic world possible, you’d have the world in this book. There was a war and bombs destroyed all the buildings, the people who survived either banded into cruel and violent gangs or are individualistic violent scavengers, roaming the ruins to both scavenge canned goods from the rubble and hunt and gather to survive. Nothing creative, nothing unique, and explained mostly by exposition. 

Nightshade’s father raised her to be prepared for this world by learning to hunt, fight, scavenge, etc. Which, not bad. I love me some badass female characters. But her father also taught her that emotions were a liability and she needed to suppress them. Which I was initially okay with, since the back cover said the emotional arc would be about her “regaining her humanity.” 

Except I found it so hard to believe that Nightshade had any emotions to regain. There was only one scene where she had any emotions at all, even though this was written in first person. I would have accepted her choosing to be unfeeling because she suppressed her emotions – you know, showing that she still had some. But she has zero compassion or sympathy at any point. Watching a woman get murdered while trying to steal food for her sick boyfriend doesn’t make her feel anything. At one point she helps out a family, not because she has any compassion for them, but because of some weird sort of logic about the daughter looking like her so maybe she can learn to be strong like her, too. I didn’t enjoy being inside her head because there was no human feeling there at all, and she was still the same at 20% into the book. 

I gave up at 20% because that’s where Connor was introduced, and I didn’t like him either. He was the opposite of Nightshade – lighthearted, optimistic, relentlessly cheery, and deciding to be friends with Nightshade for absolutely no reason beyond “the plot says so” (or maybe “my one character trait is that everyone I meet is now my friend”). When he cheerily announced “I’m going with you!” to the girl he just met who clearly and obviously didn’t like him, my eyes rolled to the back of my head and I gave up. 

I can put up with a lot in a book if one element is spectacular – I’m willing to put up with a mediocre plot for stellar characters, or mediocre characters for an amazing world. But I didn’t like these characters, this plot, or this world, and I’d rather spend my time on better books. 
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