City of Orange

By David Yoon

A man who can’t remember who he is wakes up injured and alone in an apocalyptic world. That first line made me want to read this book, but it turned out to go in a direction I wasn’t expecting. If you go into this book hoping for an apocalyptic story you’ll get parts of that with a strange narrative built in. I don’t want to spoil the direction this story takes by saying too much, but it’s not the traditional apocalypse story.

The inner dialogue of our main character, who doesn’t get a name until the end of the story, is often at times uncomfortable and a little crazy. It doesn’t feel grounded, his thoughts are distracted and sometimes disturbing. As the books progresses you start to understand his state of mind better, but in the beginning it’s a wild ride.

For the majority of the book we’re left wondering if he has lost his mind. There are constant flash backs to a normal life he had and it makes the reader want to know what happened to this guy, how did he end up like this. His mind was very crumbly and fragile.

I think there were several important topics by the end of this book. It’s a shame the beginning with the uneasy dialogue lost me. The ending was poetic and deals with grief and friendship. It’s hard for me to rate this one. While I liked the story as a whole, I didn’t enjoy the ride to get to the end.

This is one of those books where you have to decide if you want to go on the ride. It’s weird and uncomfortable and tragic and sad, but if you can make it through it has a glimmer of hope.

Happy Reading!

Xoxo Tricia