Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I read the three free Kindle short-story prequels ("The First," "The Sparrow" and "The Choice") and was intrigued with the concept of the Returned: a book about large numbers of previously dead people returning to life whole, healthy, intact, and with all their memories unchanged. When I was offered the chance to get an advanced reader copy, I jumped on it! I was eager to find out what visionary dramatic experience awaited me with the full-length book. I'm sorry to say I was disappointed. I love science fiction and the supernatural...but this book never went in that direction. I'd hoped the book would shed more light on the phenomenon. What was behind the dead returning? Were they really human? Was this a unique sophisticated type of alien invasion? In particular, what type of detailed studies did scientist run in order to try to understand it? What incredible and scary things did these scientists learn? These things interested me. But the author never went in that direction. In fact, the whole book seemed to shy away from the scientific side of the story at every chance. Readers were expected to be satisfied with the idea that what was happening was--plain and simple--unexplainable miracles, acts of God. Most characters in the book seem to have little trouble seeing these events as forming some part of the End Times...a time when "the dead shall walk upon the earth once again." What this novel did was to focus on human loss and reconnection...and that wasn't where I wanted it to go. Actually, the author pretty much tells us this in the forwards to the free prequel, "The First." There he tells us clearly what he wanted to achieve in the book and prequels. There, he says: "...the novel is about loss, and the many different ways we respond to it." He also states that the novel illuminates "...the complex range of emotions of lovers being reunited after tragedy has torn them apart." The author fulfilled that promise. "The Returned" is about the heartfelt human drama of love, loss, and family connections. It is a positive theme of family love set within an alarming and frightening situation...a situation that, in my opinion, should have been a whole lot more imaginative, creepy, and terrorizing. Overall, I didn't think the author delivered a compelling or believable plot. The book does give readers a few tantalizing news-report-style glimpses of horrific happenings around the globe related to the Returned phenomenon, but the action in this book takes place exclusively in the rural town of Arcadia, North Carolina. Through the course of this book, we find out how this small town in the Bible Belt deals with the crisis. I won't give away what happens, but is not a pretty picture of humanity. Through this plot, the author appears to attempt to give us a tiny glimpse of what the beginning terror of a possible End Times might be like as played out in a rural corner of America in the first few months of the phenomenon. Most of the time, I felt the plot lacked substance and imagination. I found myself constantly doing mental exercises, seeing obvious holes that didn't make sense. I gave this book a two-star rating because I finished it and it had its moments. But to be perfectly honest, I didn't like it.