Book Review: Night of the Purple Moon by Scott Cramer

Title: Night of the Purple Moon (The Toucan Trilogy #1)
Author: Scott Cramer
Publisher: Scott Cramer
Release Date: 28th May 2012
Read In: September 2012

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*I received a copy of the book in exchange for this review*

The epidemic strikes everyone who has passed through puberty.
Abby Leigh is looking forward to watching the moon turn purple. For months, astronomers have been predicting that Earth will pass through the tail of a comet. They say that people will see colorful sunsets and, best of all, a purple moon.
But nobody has predicted the lightning-fast epidemic that sweeps across the planet on the night of the purple moon. The comet brings space dust with it that contains germs that attack human hormones. Older teens and adults die within hours of exposure.
On a small island off the coast of Maine, Abby must help her brother and baby sister survive in this new world, but all the while she has a ticking time bomb inside of her -- adolescence.

Unfortunately this book was lacking in too many areas for me to really get into it. If felt like I was reading just the backbone of the story.

‘Ajay: I see dead people out my window. They’re in cars, on the sidewalk. For blocks and block, every direction. Adults are dead everywhere.’

The first thing that I noticed was how distant I was from the characters. I couldn’t establish a lead character of sorts. One character usually stands out as a prominent role. Here is wasn’t clear. Abby, Jordan, Emily, there were too many. There were loads of different side characters whose role was just to be there. We never really got to know them. If desperate things are happening to them, I want to feel that connection. With these characters, I didn’t feel that with anyone. They all seemed to have the same personalities. I couldn’t easily distinguish between them except by names. In which I eventually forgot. They all sort of blurred together. 

Unfortunately there wasn’t much of a story either. I like the premise of the plot. The idea of all the adults disappearing is not a new one, but it is not something I have personally read before. This was my introduction as it were. However what the synopsis says is what you get. By half way you still have them in the same situation; trying to survive. There wasn’t a story. There wasn’t drive or a threat apart from the treat of puberty. I am afraid that is quite hard to prevent. They weren’t trying to solve anything. They didn’t have a goal. They were a bunch of children, stuck on an island, just surviving. There were a couple of moments where I thought ‘ooh this could lead to something’ but those remained unfounded. Things didn’t really start to pick up until 70%. That was when they had a goal. It made a huge amount of difference. 

Its only redeeming feature is its quick pace. It was very easy to read and understand. Things move along quickly. This kind of needed to happen as there wasn’t really a story to develop. It didn’t take me that long to finish.

Overall this story didn’t really cut if for me. Lack of distinguishable character and no plot led this to be more of an account of what could happen if earth did happen to hit the tail of a comet. Although how did bacteria get into space? Or how are these bacteria able to only attack the hormones in humans? Hmm.

Becky