Review Me Twice - No Easy Way Out by Dayna Lorentz

This week, we're reviewing No Easy Way Out (the sequel to No Safety In Numbers).  Honestly, I'm really torn about these books.  I like the concept and the characters, and how they're getting gritty and everything is falling apart and people are turning back to their basic animalistic instincts.  It's all very Lord of the Flies (but with more technology... and with girls.)

But here's the thing.  It's all very drawn out.  Lorentz really, probably, could have put these two books into one book and it would have been fine.  Maybe even the third one too (I don't know; I haven't read it.)  Or, if not one book, definitely didn't need to split the books into more than two books.  Yes, book one had this awesome cliff hanger that made me love the whole book, but book two is turning into more teenage drama than a survival story, kind of turning me off to the whole thing.

Really, I think she needs to pick up the pace a little.  I'm supposed to feel panicked and scared, like her characters, and I really don't ever get to that point until I'm nearing the end of her books, which gives me the idea that maybe, she just needs to cut some of it out.

Cassy is absolutely right about the pacing problem. I put this book down when I finished and said aloud, "This woman didn't write three books. She wrote one really long book and someone told her she had to cut it into three parts." Which is precisely what happened to Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings books (they're three volumes of the same book, not three separate books) but these people have electronic key cards and a Senator, not Sting and Gandalf.

When we reviewed the first book, I said I didn't like how blase the adults all were about the kids running amok and doing as they pleased. That changes in this book, and I like the way it's handled (not as in, I approve of the behavior of the characters, but as in, this is interesting for me to read).

I definitely want to read the third book, if only because I've gone this far, and I want the ending. I also have a theory about the disease ravaging the mall (which I'm pretty sure is now two diseases because no flu in the world acts like what was happening there in the last few chapters) and I want to know how that pans out.

I like these books, but they aren't rereading material. And I reread most things, or would be willing to. It just takes a long time for things to happen (though, to Lorentz's credit, I said out loud at one point "something needs to happen soon or I'm going to fall asleep" and on the next page, something definitely happened).