PODs
First of all a thank you to the people are Spencer Hill Press for sending an arc of PODs to me. I honestly had forgotten all about requesting it so it came as quite a great surprise when I received it in the mailbox. At first I wasn't too hopeful about this book because I wasn't sure I was going to like it. The main reason for this was only the fact that after reading so many dystopian books now, they all seem to blend in together. But luckily for me, I found PODs to be quite original and not like other dystopian books.
PODs starts out a little before people actually know about the big, bad virus. That's one reason why it's so different from other post-apocalyptic books. The other reason is the time distribution. This book takes place of a course of, well, I really don't know how long but it's got to be probably over a year or two. Because when the people are in the pods that's at least fifteen months. Anyway, when they're in the pods we read about what they go through over those fifteen months but that's only a part of this story, there's so much more after that.
The part when they're all in the pods has got to be my favorites. I loved the way they all slowly grew toward each other and how they became a real family.
PODs is written in Eva's point of view and I actually liked her. It's hard for me sometimes to like a female in young adult fiction because we all know how irritating they can be. Eva wasn't the most perfect character I've ever read about but I at least liked her. She was spunky and really strong, considering everthing she had to go through. And she didn't let herself be put aside because she's "womanfolk". Go, girl!
I also liked the other people in the pods, well most of them anyway.
However, I wasn't a big fan of David, who's Eva's boyfriend. I just didn't feel him. And also the romance was a little meh for me. I liked to see more between them than always making out, almost getting hot and heavy and then getting bothered by someone. Also outside of the pods was this an issue. It was really irritating me at one point.
There were some flaws in this book for me like the romance and also that I would like to hear more information in the beginning about the virus because I couldn't get how quickly the gorvernment got things going about the whole pods selection thing. And also I missed the characters from the pods once they were all seperated. I was so sad at that! And even at the end we don't know what all happened to them. I even want to know what happened to that jerk Josh. And I want to know if Eva's parents did die or not. At least Tiffany and her baby were there. I can't wait to read the sequel!
But still even with the flaws, I really liked this book. I read it in les than two days and that's always a good thing with me. I loved reading about Eva and I really liked the writing style. It was really easy to read and I'm really hoping there will be a sequel. I want to read again about all the characters!
Also it's really scary how this actually could happen. A virus that wipes out the entire human race.
Overall, PODs was a fast-paced, easily read, exciting dystopian/science-fiction-ish book that I know a lot of people are going to like. Like a lot of books it has some flaws but the action and great characters definitely make up for it. I would recommend it to dystopian book fans all around.
"The sequel to PODs, "The Infected, a PODs novel," will release through Spencer Hill Press in November 2014 in paperback and e-book format."