A No-Nonsense Main Character
4.5 out of 5 stars
Joe, the main character of our novel – is as no-nonsense as you come. He doesn’t care about much. He works as a mechanic when he finds out that his best friend and fiancé are both dead. On top of that, he finds out that his beloved grandmother passed in the same week. Having lost it all he goes out to his Grandmother’s cabin in rural Oregon to get away (at the suggestion of his deceased grandma).
The grandma notes/letters in American Survivor really made it an enjoyable book to me. It was a nice change of pace to have a non-prepper being taught by a semi-prepper (in grandma) through letters. Every time Joe would find something he didn’t think he could deal with – there was a letter from grandma to make him feel better (or tell him to suck it up). I’m not sure who did the narration for these parts, but she had the perfect “motherly/grandmotherly” tone for it and really added to the story.
Newman writes about a couple different situations from a few points of view and some of them were a little thin (a girl who gets whatever she wants because of her body) but that didn’t take away from the story at all in my eyes. I find that there are really people like that and it wouldn’t be so far-fetched that Joe would run across someone like that early on into an apocalypse. Another “thin” part of the book were the bad guys. I think that Newman was trying to write characters that were easy to hate but just adding “alu Akbar” (forgive my spelling, I’m not going to look that up and get added to another list) does not make them multi-dimensional. I also assume that Newman is holding out some information for the other books in the series.
It was interesting to view the apocalypse from someone who basically doesn’t know it’s happening yet. I don’t know why it’s just nice to read it in my opinion.
Overall, a refreshing and easy reading post-apocalyptic book. I enjoyed American Survivor and if you’re a PA fan, then I think you’ll enjoy this too.
Book Description:
The North Koreans launch a surprise Nuclear EMP attack on the USA. Our hero, Joe doesn’t care about politics or what happened, he just knows his world went to Hell. Planes fell out of the sky, people went nuts looting and killing as he scrambled to hide from all of the craziness.
Joe had a cabin and land in Southern Oregon when TSHTF and retreated to the cabin to survive the massive die-off that was always predicted for an apocalypse. The weeks before the Grid went down weren’t much better for Joe because his best friend, his fiancé, and his beloved Grandma all died during the weeks leading up to lights out.
Joe was a young auto mechanic whose only stress in life was from a domineering girlfriend, and now he has to learn how to survive in a post-apocalyptic world without military or survival training.
To make matters worse, others look to him for support and guidance. Listen to American Survivor to find out how a regular guy survives in a post-apocalyptic world.
American Survivor by A.J. Newman
Narrator: Kevin Pierce
Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
Series: American Apocalypse #1
Published by Self Published on March 15th 2018
Genres: Post-Apocalyptic, Prepper
Format: Audiobook
I received this book for free. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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