Title: Surviving the Apocalypse
Author: Tinnean
Publisher: JMS Books
Length: 58 Pages
At a Glance: While not quite what I expected with regards to the apocalyptic event, this quick read delivered a sweet romance.
Reviewed By: Lindsey
Blurb: Lyncoln Ryland always saw himself as an ordinary man with an ordinary job, working maintenance in an ordinary mall. The only thing about him that isn’t ordinary are his feelings for the man who’s renovating the mall, but any kind of relationship with such a sophisticated man is highly unlikely.
Adam James is the wealthy man who owns the mall. He’s secretly been yearning for Lyncoln, a man he doesn’t see as ordinary in the least. But Adam’s family has plans for him, and they don’t include a relationship with a blue-collar worker.
All this is about to change when the sirens go off, signaling the possible end of the world. When the two men realize this isn’t a drill, they take shelter in the mall that isn’t quite as ordinary as everyone believes. What will the outcome be when two such disparate men must survive the apocalypse together.
Review: I have learned, over time, that my preference generally is in the larger, more complex stories with plenty of time for development in both the character and world building. However, I don’t always have time to jump into something too intricate and long. Sometimes I need a break from my normal, and a quick little taste to pass the time. My criteria on what I look for in a shorter story differs dramatically, because I have to make concessions and try not to compare it to a story of a couple hundred pages or more. Because I am aware of this about myself, I am extremely choosey when it comes to picking out a shorter length book. Surviving the Apocolypse’s blurb jumped out at me and seemed to hit all my reading preferences in both plot and romance.
While the premise of the story, and Lync and Adam’s connection, is forced from catastrophic events, in reality the apocalypse happens outside of their safe haven, with minimal knowledge of what was occurring outside of the mall. Instead, the focus is more on the surviving of it, and details are explored in what it would take to live through nuclear warfare. Kind of freaky to be honest. I read the book thinking several times, in the event of something like that happening, how I and most of the people I know would be toast and completely unprepared.
Luckily for Adam, Lync was raised by a “prepper”. So, while Lync is the mall’s maintenance man, with little in the way of formal education, he is intelligent in the trades and also understands survival techniques. Given that, combined with Adam’s education and input, the two manage to carve a safe place for themselves in the mall Adam’s family owns. Thankfully, that mall has plenty of stores for them to stock up from. I appreciated the detail as far as preparations and reasoning, but also how, in the panic, little things were still overlooked by the two and how they had to adapt to what they had on hand.
There were some spots of minor humor, and I felt their pain on the coffee front. There wasn’t the exploration into the apocalyptic event that I was hoping for, but it was not necessarily unexpected with the shorter length. Instead, the focus was mainly on the two protagonists being stuck together for the foreseeable future and finally admitting their feelings to one another. Though the time flies by pretty fast, as far as reading goes, the forming of the relationship takes place over several weeks, so in a way, it was a sort of slow burn. For the length of the story the pacing was well done; it didn’t feel rushed, and it did feel complete. These are things that matter to me in a short story. I am glad Tinnean was very specific on what was written and what was glossed over, because with two people stuck with little to nothing to do but play some board games, how much time really needs to be spent on the monotony of each day? Instead, the key points and conversations are present on page, with little details interjected on the passing of time.
The romance was sweet, and both MCs were likeable. I won’t say I formed too much of a connection with either, because truthfully there just wasn’t enough time for the intense character development that I like in longer stories, but that was to be expected, as it is with any short story. So, in this case, it wasn’t a let-down for me. Both Lync and Adam were fleshed out enough to hold my interest individually as well as in their developing romance.
There is a bit of a twist which was kind of expected, because it was the only way to have a complete story. In my opinion, it was delivered well and when I got to the end, the whole story left me with a smile on my face for Lync and Adam. And that is all I really wanted this time around.
You can buy Surviving the Apocalypse here:
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