Post-apocalypse thriller novel, written by K.C. Jones and published by Nightfire in 2022.
So here we've got Beth, a hopeless screwup, house-sitting for some rich folks in the gated community of Strawberry Dunes, Oregon. She's enjoying spending time with the rich folks' good, good dog Jake and trying not to screw up this latest opportunity. And she meets up with the next-door neighbor, Mike, a suicidal film producer. They share a few bottles of champagne -- and then a bed. And in the morning, they head out for a day at the beach and learn that the world has ended.
Well, it's not necessarily that obvious. Yes, there was a meteor shower last night, and the area is littered with weirdly symmetrical meteorites this morning, and Beth and Mike are both hungover and not paying much attention to how stressed-out and miserable Jake is about everything or how all the locals are planning to evacuate. But they figure things out pretty fast when the panicking, shrieking horses with bloody saddles charge through the beach, and when the cop drives up, tells everyone to run for their lives, and speeds away, and when people start screaming in agony and vanishing into thin air.
They scramble into Mike's SUV, ready to retreat to somewhere safer -- but now they can't find the key to get the car started. They're stranded on an empty beach without even a picnic lunch. The tide is slowly coming in. And they're surrounded by alien monsters. Invisible, razor-clawed, hivemind horrors with eyes inside their mouths. Bizarre vines that exude tranquilizers and can infect and grow inside anything biological. Hovering, tentacled gasbags that like to eat everything.
Can they make it out of this deathtrap beach? Is there any way to find safety? Can they run through the gamut of terrifying, bloodthirsty monsters? If so, they'll need help from an unexpected source -- and even then, not all of them will make it off the beach alive.
So how's the novel? Well, it's a fun book, but it's far from perfect.
Characterization is pretty great. Beth calls herself a human car wreck, but it becomes clear early on that she's been set up for failure by decades of emotional abuse from her mother. (We never meet Beth's parents, but you learn to hate her mom and deeply love her dad. You also hope both of them survive this disaster -- her dad because he's wonderful and loving and deserves happiness, and her mom because she needs to see how great Beth is and just completely eat shit about it.) Beth is smart and resourceful -- but she drinks too much, and even after swearing to quit, she still doesn't entirely lose the craving. Mike is suicidal -- at least until he tries it and realizes the only thing that hurts more than life is undergoing life-threatening trauma. I don't think he's as smart as Beth, but seems braver and more mature. They both argue a lot -- but they just barely met each other, and there is an alien invasion going on, which makes for a lot of stress. As for Jake? Well, Jake is a good, good, good boy!
And speaking of stress -- boy, there's a lot of suspense stuffed into these pages! It's bad enough getting chased by monsters, but my god, there's losing the car keys and having to sit in the car for hours waiting for the monsters to find you. There's creeping out to the wrecked police car, worrying about when the invisible monsters will come after you. There's worrying about whether you'll be killed by monsters, thirst, or drowning. There's calling the police station and having to listen to the dispatcher get butchered over the radio. There's escaping from a monster plant, finding out it's growing vines inside you, and having to get them cut and burned out of you. There's finally finding the car keys -- and then having the battery die! A lot of the fun of this story is watching the situations get worse and more terrifying for the characters.
I do think the book is a bit too focused on hammering out explanations for things that don't need explanations. Where do the monsters come from? There's a lot of work on picking that apart, and I didn't feel like the characters would care too much about that. Is it something other than an alien invasion? Was it a dimensional incursion? Did they come from somewhere underground? Did they come out of The Mist? Maybe -- but I thought the book dragged whenever there was too much fiddling around with the possibly twisty origins of the crisis.
And as much as I enjoyed the suspense, there were times I felt like it got to be a bit too much. Losing the car keys, seeing the car keys, trying to find the keys while the monsters closed in, and then finding out it was all for nothing? Well, that got a little wearying. On the other hand, that's the way good suspense works in fiction -- and if they'd immediately found the keys and driven off the beach, there wouldn't have been a good story -- unless they then got chased by even more monsters...
All in all, it's a fun little monster thriller, and if you enjoy fun little monster thrillers, this is probably worth picking up.