The Outside - Review

Title: The Outside

Author: Laura Bickle

Series: Sequel to The Hallowed Ones

Synopsis: “The world is not what it once was.  Two thirds of the population has been killed by a plague of vampires, and the survivors hide out in isolated territories – both protected and trapped by forces beyond their understanding. 

          Exiled from her Amish community and shunned for her refusal to adhere to the new rules of survival, Katie enters an outside world of unspeakable violence with only her two “English” friends and a horse by her side.  Together they seek answers wherever they can find them – but each sunset brings the threat of vampire attack, and each sunrise, the threat of starvation.

          “And yet through this darkness come the shining ones: luminescent men and women with the power to deflect vampires and survive the night.  But can these new people be trusted, and are they even people at all?

          “In this thrilling sequel to The Hallowed Ones, it’s up to one Amish girl to save her family, her community, and the boy she loves.  But what will she have to leave behind in return?”

Review:  First of all, if you haven’t read The Hallowed Ones stop reading this and go read my review of that one.  Then go read that book first.  I mean it.  Go now.

          Okay, is everyone who hasn't read The Hallowed Ones gone?  Good.  Here we go.   This book continues the story that was started in The Hallowed Ones.  Katie, Alex, Ginger and Horace (the horse) are struggling to survive after being cast out of the Amish Community that Katie called home.  I stayed up way past my bedtime to read this book.  I should have known better, but I love to read in bed before going to sleep and so I started reading The Outside about an hour before I absolutely had to go to sleep.  I finished 4 hours later.  It was 345am.  I was so very tired at work the next day.  I was grumpy, and I’m almost never grumpy.  Laura Bickle owes my boyfriend and my work peeps an apology.  The Outside was amazing.  I am an animal lover, to the extreme (I’ll post pics of my spoiled rotten cats for you sometime), and so when animals appear in the cast of characters for a novel I get nervous.  When authors cruelly kill off those fuzzy characters I get very upset and generally will avoid novels by those authors in the future, and so I got nervous when Katie and her crew came across the private “zoo” with the caged animals.  I know many people feel the same way I do about animals, so I will go ahead and say read The Outside.  There’s a crazy preacher man, undead bikers, and glow in the dark scientists, how awesome is all that? I was caught up in the spell of this story and could not put it down until I had reached the end, no matter how tired I was.  Read it, read it, read it!

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

ISBN: 978-0544000131

If you like this book you may want to read:

 Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter (review coming soon) ISBN: 978-0373210893

Plague Town by Dana Fredsti ISBN: 978-0857686350