Cover Image: The Apocalypse Seven

The Apocalypse Seven

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One morning, a small and disparate group of people – college students, a hermit preacher, an astrophysicist, for example – wake up to find the world changed. Each seems to be utterly alone. Familiar buildings are more or less intact, but wildlife and vegetation has taken over the university town of Cambridge. There’s no electricity, and all the batteries are dead. The astrophysicist notices the stars are in subtly wrong positions. As the group makes contact with one another, gathering at the university, they support one another when they aren’t arguing, for each has a different understanding of what has happened. Touré, a twenty-ish Cambridge coder, calls it the whateverpocalypse. Just as they learn they are not the only humans alive and suspect around a century has elapsed while they were unconscious, they begin to suspect they are not the only intelligent species on the planet, but it’s anyone’s guess whether the ghosts or aliens or whatevertheyare mean the human survivors well or ill.

By far, the sneak star of the book is Norman, the coywolf (coyote-wolf hybrid) tamed by the blind character, Carol.

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Thank you to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the opportunity to read The Apocalypse Seven early in exchange for an honest review.

Seven people wake up one morning in New England only to find that things have... changed. A LOT. Animals and plants have taken over, there seem to be no other humans around (though some find one another relatively fast while others take longer to meet up), and no electronic tech works at all. These survivors have to figure out how to remain survivors while coping with their new, confusing, and terrifying reality (including terrifying and unpredictable weather!). If that weren’t enough, weird stuff keeps happening... like shadows watching you back and calling you by name.

I’m still trying to decide what I think about this one. I liked all of the characters and feel like Doucette did a good job helping readers get to know each of them. I really enjoyed the world building and the way the “whateverpocalypse” was built through the eyes and experiences of the characters. The explanation for what actually happened was confusing and very Deus ex machina - though I supposed it’s necessary given the type of apocalypse this book set its characters into. If the characters all just wake up after it’s over and live in the aftermath without anyone who lived through it you’re not going to get real answers about how things got that way without an outside force to tell you.. But the book has great touches that I loved, especially Elton and Nolan. In the end, I wanted to keep reading to learn more about this new world and it’s inhabitants. I hope there will be more in the future!

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I am a sucker for the gentler type of apocalypse book that starts right after the defining event occurs and deals more with the nuts bolts of it all - this one was right in that wheelhouse. Seven folks across the northeast U.S. wake up to a world quite different than when they last remember. No other people are around, the landscape has become overgrown and untamed, weather is unpredictable, and the city is home to roaming wolf-coyote packs and other out of place critters. I enjoyed the first half of this book – reading the different points of view of the characters, watching them eventually all come together and try to figure how to obtain food and live in a world where you can no longer just Google any information you need (Carol, a young blind student, is able to predict weather patterns by the pressure in her ears and several excursions to the dilapidated library are made to find information). I feel bit more time could have been spent on the ending/resolution, instead of rushing through it. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book!

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Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a free advance copy of this book to review.

The Apocalypse Seven is a book that follows the stories of 7 strangers that are the last humans alive following some sort of apocalypse, known as the whatever-calypse to the survivors. The survivors are a random, rag-tag group that must find a way to survive in ways they could never imagine. Eventually their paths start to cross and they move forward toward an unknown future.

This book started off in a typical dystopia/apocalypse manner. Protagonist realizes he’s alone, tries to understand the world, meets another survive, etc. The first half of the book was comprised of chapters that followed each character. While this would have been great for a longer book, it made me wonder when/if we were going to get to the climax of the book at all.

There was a theme of freewill vs fate which was interesting but it really need to have been planted earlier in the story to make a deeper impact. I also felt like the ideas of guilt at end of the book were thrown in at the last minute and completely underdeveloped.

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This was not the one.. DNFing at 32% because I couldn't get into the story. The pacing, the characters, the dialogue... Not for me. Which is a bummer, because the plot sounds right up my ally.

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* 3 stars*

I was highly anticipating this novel because I love apocalypse stories. I was ready for an intense ride! But...I was never able to connect with any of the characters, and they all fell a bit flat for me. I also never felt they were ever in any real danger, even when bad things happened. There was just a big lack of excitement or drama for me 99% of the time.

For what this book had and what it entailed, I was really hoping for it to get my heart pumping and fill my mind with soul! But, it was just whelming. There are giant wolves, bears and boars along with tornadoes, blizzards and hurricanes! But, I never truly felt for the characters or felt like I was in the action. Not to mention, all of the topics like faith and surviving in a world ravaged by death were flitted over, and I just wanted something deeper. It was almost too light of an approach, and it lost any soul in the process.

**Thanks to NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for sharing this eARC with me in exchange for my honest review**

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What happens when everyone dies in an apocalypse except the bored. What happens when you combine The Stand with....the Nowhere generation.

This is what happens when a bunch of apathetic people manage to survive destruction. If Reality Bites survived The Walking Dead.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this book.

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This one was OK...the premise of the story was very interesting, but there were too many POVs for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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What would you do, if one day you woke up and everyone else was gone, there was no electricity and wildlife was slowly overtaking the human space? It might sound hypothetical to you, but that's what the characters of "The Apocalypse Seven" have to face in real life. It's a fun read, with the titular 7 characters being from different backgrounds, with different skills and knowledge and having to team up together not only to survive, but also to solve what exactly had happened. Each of them has a different attitude towards the entire situation, different theory as to what happened and different priorities. If you like post-apo genre and are well-versed in sci-fi, this book is for you!

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This is a solid post-apocalyptic mystery with a splash of sci-fi in the mix. The overall story kept my attention, even though the finale felt a little underwhelming. I liked the characters, but balancing seven main characters got a little crowded at time. Overall I really did enjoy the writing style and the premise, thank you so much Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for a copy of this eArc in exchange for an honest review!

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Well...that went places I didn’t expect it to go.

A couple of reviews I’ve seen liken this to Wanderers, and yeah, there’s some Wanderers-type vibe going on. Though instead of everyone being mentally locked inside a simulation while their physical bodies are still walking around, everyone in this book just...disappeared. Everyone except for the Apocalypse Seven that is.

7 characters is a lot of narrative to follow, especially in the beginning, but as we moved further into the story it became easier. The start was great, instantly into the apocalypse or whateverpocalypse as it’s dubbed in this book. And it was fun initially as the characters woke up to their new reality and tried to work out what had happened to the rest of humanity.
I liked that they weren’t preppers or survivalists. I liked that they were diverse. I loved that animals became the top of the food chain and that the weather was all kinds of off. It sounds like a recipe for disaster yes?

But, and it is a heavy hearted but, I feel a little let down by what eventuated. I couldn’t really connect with the characters, they were a little 2-dimensional, a little disconnected, and with little growth. While the writing was good, I found the dialogue to be stilted, more academic, rather than conversational. And the drama didn’t take the book to the heights that I was expecting. Hurdles were cleared a little too neatly.

The premise promised something that I’m not quite sure the rest of the book delivered, not for me anyway.

Thank you to Gene Doucette, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and NetGalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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This book has the same vibe of "I am legend" and "Bird Box" (it must be because my repertoire for this type of apocalyptic plot is low), but I like both works, so it is not a demerit.
The scenery of the cities invaded by wild animals and vegetation (the "wolves" that appear in the book, my imagination interpreted as the werewolves in the movie Twilight lol). The need to survive in a group through a pessimistic scenario, dealing with disagreements in groups, friendships and other dramas (The friendship between Robbie and Touré was a wonderful thing).
The characters each had a personality present, some were cool to follow others just managed to be annoying (Sorry but there were times that Carol irritated me, unlike Touré who for me was one of the best characters :)
The final part of the book, where the questions found answers, was a little difficult to swallow all at once, it was like ... all at once, and the character (without spoiler) made me very angry at the end, due to his motivations.

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This book took me out of a reading slump. Of course I don't even get much time to read nowadays but even so, picking up a book to read seemed like a chore in the past few months. Gene Doucette solved that problem. I flipped through the pages and was hooked immediately. And then I finished the book in two days, a speed I haven't been able to achieve for half a year now.
Seven people wake up to a world that has been ravaged by some unknown force. Nature has taken over and everything that remained lay in ruins. Now its upto them to survive in the wild. With their little-to-no hunting and gathering skills, they try to last each day until they stumble upon something that may answer their apocalypse related questions. But is it something that they want to know? Read on to find out.
I really enjoyed this book. The narration is sassy and the characters really interesting. Not a moment of boring in this book. If you like speculative fiction and scifi, do give this a try.

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Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for an eARC.

I suppose this wasn't for me, I lost interest half way through but it was a very easy read. The beginning was very promising and started off quite well then it just went completely down hill with an anti-climactic ending. The characters had a lack of development and the world/atmosphere building was poor.

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This book was fun, and I had a really great time reading it. While it isn’t anything ground-breaking and doesn’t necessarily venture anywhere new within the genre, it was still enough to keep me interested. While certain threads of the novel are laid out a little too heavy handed for my reading preference, the author does a great job at leading up to an ending that is quite unpredictable.

The Apocalypse Seven gave me major Under the Dome vibes as I was reading it, which was a novel I thoroughly enjoyed, but this one left me missing the fully formed characters that novel has. But that is one of the areas where King excels most, so it can be hard to hold a candle to his characters. These characters were interesting to follow throughout the course of the novel, but they all just felt a little too juvenile. Even the characters that were supposed to be the adults of the group came off feeling more like teenagers in the way they were written. There was one character who takes on a specific role within the group, that I never felt their journey into this role was earned or believable.

The author excels at keeping the reader engaged throughout the course of the novel, and moving the story along at a Goldilocks pace, in that it is “just right”. I definitely recommend this one if you are a fan of a good apocalypse tale that doesn’t necessarily have to break the mould.

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Robbie wakes up and can't believe he's already late for class on his first day of his freshman year at Harvard. He's surprised when he can't find his backpack, and when the dorm appears to be mostly empty...aside from Carol. Carol is also a freshman, and is blind. She is in a panic because she can't find her seeing eye dog. But both of them are in for a surprise when they reach the outside of the building. There are no cars or people to be found. The grass, trees, plants, and ivy all seem to have grown... a lot... overnight. Cell phones and electricity don't seem to be working. Did they sleep through the apocalypse?? Slowly, Robbie and Carol come across others who are experiencing the same confusion they are. Working together, will they figure out what happened?

I looooved this book so very much. Apocalypse/dystopian novels often take themselves pretty seriously, but this one definitely doesn't. My favorite example is Touré, the gamer/coder who views the situation as if it was a video game, even going so far as to refer to his plans as "quests." There is humor along with the engrossing storyline as the characters experience their "new normal" and attempt to put together the puzzle of what happened. Each of the characters are quirky in his or her own way, and incredibly likable. My only complaint is that I feel the ending wrapped up a little too quickly (I was at about 84% and convinced Doucette was paving the way for a sequel, but it doesn't appear that there will be). I am likely going to check out some of his other books to find characters as lovable as these were :)

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Who knew the end of civilization could be so funny? Apparently Gene Doucette did. This is the first time I've read his work, and I enjoyed it immensely. I kept shouting out random theories about what was happening, much to the annoyance of my husband, but it turned out that all my speculation was wrong. I truly had no clue what was happening. In The Apocalypse 7, we start meeting individuals who, apparently, have slept through the end of the world. Robbie and Carol, both Harvard freshman, find each other on campus. From there, the book introduces each new cast member, and gives us a good idea of their character, from how they handle learning they are, essentially, alone in the world. Some other reviewers thought this part dragged, but I never lost interest. I was keenly invested in each person's backstory and journey, and to see how they ultimately fit in with the rest of the misfit survivors. Once all seven are together in Cambridge, they decide it's time to find some answers, but they have no idea what mayhem those answers will bring.

This book was just so much fun for me! I was very attached to the characters, and I wanted them to not only survive, but thrive. The mystery of what exactly happened was a driving force, one that kept the pages turning long past bedtime. I did think perhaps more could have been squeezed out of the extreme weather and the animals gone wild aspects, though both were used effectively. I guess I just didn't ever feel that the characters were in real peril, but I definitely still wanted to know what was happening. The best surprise and my favorite thing about this book was the humor. It's dry and dark, and I loved it. The Apocalypse 7 is a journey through an unpopulated world, with the least likely band of heroes ever. It will keep you guessing, and thinking, and laughing. Thank you to Mariner Books and Netgalley for the chance to review this advance copy.

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The premise of this book intrigued me, and having enjoyed one of the comp titles (WANDERERS), I was excited to read this one. However, I found both the writing style and the main character to be unengaging, and I couldn't keep with it. Also - the introduction of and the main character's interaction with a disabled POC character just in chapter 1 was disappointing - it was awkward and tactless and offputting and completely disconnected me from the story. DNF.

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I LOVED the world-building in this world. The opening was a little slow for me and I put it down a couple of times, but it picks up the pace once you get past the first 50 pages. That being said, I enjoyed this book tremendously. Post-apocalyptic stories are some of my favorites, it's all about the "what ifs" for me. What I love the most is that all of the characters are likable, and even though it was a post-apocalyptic story I laughed a lot. It was also thought-provoking and I appreciate that. Nature is in full force and it's scary to think about, especially in today's climate. I highly recommend it!

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This just wasn’t for me, I really couldn’t click with any of the story and it was over all just bleh. The writing wasn’t really my style either, I tried and it didn’t work for me.

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