Review: Needed some tightening
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 25, 2011
Mercy is written from the point of view of Georgina: a wife writing in her journal to her husband about her mission trip to Ethiopia. Instead, it turns into a first hand account of a zombie uprising.The note from her husband is a nice touch at the very beginning of the book (imploring her to actually write in it), but I needed more of her thought process and emotional reaction throughout the entire book. There was a lot of narrating events or what other people had told her. I wanted the main character to freak out a whole lot more, it's a zombie apocalypse! At least in her journal; people pour their souls into their journals.The main reason I struggled with this book was the timeline. The first fifty pages especially needed a more linear layout. I felt like I knew a whole lot about several characters, and then all of a sudden they would wash up on the beach and I would meet them for the first time. I felt like the main character was rambling, perhaps because she's scared, forgets what happened, but it made it feel very disjointed. The flashbacks needed to be more clearly identified. I get that at the beginning of most chapters she's flashing back, but then the tense would switch and leave me confused. I honestly read the first fifty pages multiple times due to timeline confusion, and I never recovered from it to enjoy the rest of the novel. Ultimately, this is why I gave it a 2.There are also a few other clarity issues. Some things happened on the island without the protagonist being there, and she still wrote about them. There's no real reason why the other characters would tell her some of the stuff she wrote about, especially about things they thought about saying but then decided not to say.The author does make some good comparisons and real world observations. Georgina became more relatable when she talked about her daughter and her adoption from Ethiopia and I liked the themes of motherhood, even in the face of a zombie apocalypse, that it explored.The author brought about some important theological discussions halfway through the book, and focused more on the characters humanity and why bad things happen. I liked this, but I never quite recovered from reading the beginning of the book.I enjoyed the overall concept of what the author tried to do, but maybe it would have worked better (at least for me) if it was not written in journal form. Or if it was journal form, to be a lot more linear from beginning to end, or with clearly defined flashbacks.I really did like the adoption angle and role of the main character's daughter Mercy. The last few pages tied it all together nicely in the end. There is something here, it just needed to be tightened up more.Review by: Erica of Sift Book ReviewsSift Book Reviews received a free copy for review from the author. This has, in no way, affected the reviewer's opinion.