Blog Tour - Day Zero by Kelly deVos

Description:

If you're going through hell...keep going.

Seventeen-year-old coder Jinx Marshall grew up spending weekends drilling with her paranoid dad for a doomsday she’s sure will never come. She’s an expert on self-heating meal rations, Krav Maga and extracting water from a barrel cactus. Now that her parents are divorced, she’s ready to relax. Her big plans include making it to level 99 in her favorite MMORPG and spending the weekend with her new hunky stepbrother, Toby.

But all that disaster training comes in handy when an explosion traps her in a burning building. Stuck leading her headstrong stepsister, MacKenna, and her precocious little brother, Charles, to safety, Jinx gets them out alive only to discover the explosion is part of a pattern of violence erupting all over the country. Even worse, Jinx’s dad stands accused of triggering the chaos.

In a desperate attempt to evade paramilitary forces and vigilantes, Jinx and her siblings find Toby and make a break for Mexico. With seemingly the whole world working against them, they’ve got to get along and search for the truth about the attacks—and about each other. But if they can survive, will there be anything left worth surviving for?


My Thoughts:

Jinx is just a typical teenager. She just wants to go home from school, play video games, and indulge in soda and junk food. But unfortunately, Jinx is also the daughter of high-profile Max Marshall, a computer genius and doomsday prepper. A lot of her childhood has been spent running survival drills in the case of a catastrophic event. 

What starts out as a normal school day turns out to be the end of the world as they know it, as Jinx and her siblings try to navigate the dangerous political rhetorics, bombings, betrayals, and a Terminator-like government official who will not die, and will not stop his mission to capture Jinx. 

I really like dystopian fiction, and I thought the politics were interesting, if not a little confusing. I also really liked many of the characters, particularly Jinx, her younger brother, Charles, and stepsister, MacKenna. 

Jinx's father also turned out to be a really interesting character, too. There were also some great twists at the end of the novel, making the second book a compulsory need!

I did have issues with how tied in Jinx's family was with the highest level of officials. It was explained that Jinx's father was instrumental in Ammon Carter's rise to presidency. But some of the other events (no specifics, so I don't spoil anything) seemed almost too convenient, especially for a family not living in DC, with no prior ties to politics. Was it so implausible I didn't enjoy reading this book? No, definitely not. But it was a stumbling block.


Thanks so much to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.