The truth is, I'm just not impressed.

What I Liked
It wasn't really a cold open, as there were a few chapters of kids rummaging around in the wilderness for some days, but the moment when the kids came home to find their pets dead from lack of water/food and everyone else mysteriously vanished was a captivating one - and easy to put yourself in those shoes. What would you do?

What I Didn't Like
My biggest petpeeve was that Marsden decided to write in first-person for a young female character... except it was reallllly obvious it wasn't written by a female. His phrasing was extremely masculine and often clumsy, like he was trying to write how he thought a young girl would, but he just had no clue.

I'm not Australian. I read books from various countries often - but this one had me baffled sometimes. Take this quote: "One of the small rituals that developed each day was Corrie's Testing the Trannie. This was a solemn ceremony that took place whenever Corrie got the urge. She'd get up, look at the tent, give a little murmur like 'I think I might give the trannie another burl', and walk over to the tent." Maybe I'm living under a rock, but... wha?

This is style preference, but when quotation marks are like 'this' instead of like "this" it drives me nuts!