Antidote Review

**Thank you to Netgalley for sending me an eARC in return for an honest review. 1.5 star!!! I don't even know where to start with this book. The only reason I have given a star is because I liked the initial premise of the story but that was it. The story just went downhill from there. So, the story starts off with a girl named Lena who lives in a post-apocalyptic society where people are dying from a decaying illness called Dermadecatis. The story then progresses to how she loses her parents and then the world she knows descends into chaos as more people start dying. There's a desperate need for a cure and somehow Lena might be the key to saving the human race. This was a very confusing book. There was no worldbuilding and the characters were very lack luster. Lena was the biggest Mary Sue. She meets Jared, the other MC, falls in love with him in seconds and then proceeds to follow him to a safe place. I mean, the girl doesn't even know him, how has she made the decision to trust him. I also didn't like the forced on relationship of Jared and Lena. They had like zero chemistry and Jared was the like the most obnoxious guy ever. He just bullies her and is even physically rough with her. What does she see in the guy? I also felt that the book tended to focus a lot on their relationship instead of the disease. I also found that there were many details about the society that were not explained to the reader. The only part that interested me was the disease. I thought at first that this would be a zombie book but it wasn't and that was okay. It kind of reminded me of the show "Helix" which I liked. I also felt that a lot of the gadgets mentioned in the book were lazily written. There was not much thought given to it. Like, for example, freeze guns and stuff to climb walls. I wish the author made it more difficult to get out of situations. I would have liked to see some more realistic scenarios and solutions. The other thing that really irked me about this book was the grammar and overall structure. Although, the pacing was fine. There were plenty of grammatical errors and long winded paragraphs. I also felt that some sentences were constructed rather poorly like as though the author lacked basic writing skills. I think these things needed to be seriously sorted out before the book hits the shelves. Overall, I think the author had a decent idea for a novel. But the execution was severely lacking. I am not so keen on book two, unfortunately, as I ended up skimming the last couple of chapters.

#disease #youngadult #postapocalyptic #horror #TaylorHondos