the cabin at the end of the world book review

A good example happens early on with Eric. Long paragraphs featuring past events that I suppose are meant to make me care, but they fall flat like they’re just facts and statements being repeated so I know something about these people. And rather than bring me into the character, I’m simply told things. As a reader I felt more detached from the people on the pages, including the little girl, Wen. It’s hard enough to pull off present tense as it is, but this combination makes it even more awkward. Everything is essentially told to the reader by a primarily omniscient third person present point of view. I think a part of it was how they were presented as well as the point of view being used. I grew worried early on when I found myself (yet again) having trouble connecting emotionally with the characters. It’s rare that I find something in it that I enjoy-and most of the time anything I do enjoy actually comes out of the YA fiction section.īut this book sounded interesting and even if it did turn out to just be a basic home-invasion-with-crazies sort of book, it’s October and that means I’m more open to horror.

I don’t connect with the characters very well. I often find that I’m disappointed in them for a variety of reasons. Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined.ĭiscussion: I don’t normally read books that are shelved in the Fiction section of the store. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault”. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake.

I wondered: Is this “end of the world” business literal? After reading the summary I realized it might be, and given that I have a weird kind of fascination with that sort of thing, I decided to go for it. Why I Chose It: The cover caught my eye at work-that and the title.

The cabin at the end of the world book review