The line between

Author: Tosca Lee
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Original publication date: January 2019
Book description: An extinct disease re-emerges from the melting Alaskan permafrost to cause madness in its victims. For recent apocalyptic cult escapee Wynter Roth, it’s the end she’d always been told was coming.

Thoughts:
So I picked this book up simply because it was available in audiobook in Scribd and it was in the runners up for the Good Reads Choice Awards 2019.

IT starts very slow, we have Wynter a young woman who is struggling with her life choices. We have two main timelines, the now where Wynter is adapting to live in the outside world. Wynter just emerges from a religious congregation New Earth. She grew up from her childhood through adolescence. Initially, you know nothing, why she was expelled, how she feels about the ideology that religion preaches.
She is a very insecure person, in her personality, physical looks, and on her own emotions. 
She is very realistic, even though the very first few chapters felt very slow as we follow her only while she has a maelstrom of emotions, with a lot of downs as she struggles with the society as a whole. She might have left the physical space of the congregation she was desperate to escape from, but then again once outside she has to face reality, change, getting herself a new purpose.

Then it takes off with action as the disease mentioned in the description takes off. 

It suddenly changes pace, but still, we have flashbacks to Wynter's life before she was cast out and we start to piece together and figure her out. I do not enjoy flashbacks too much. After a few chapters, you get used to it, but still, in my opinion, it takes you off the story in order to get to the memory. 
The part of the story that was describing the life in the enclave caught my attention, scary realistic. It felt powerful, I totally forgot this was supposed to be an apocalyptic thriller, it felt simply a religious exploration fiction book. 

I enjoyed it, it has drama, a little romance, examples of very good families, very selfish people, cowardice and toxic relationships in different aspects.

It was a good read, looking back at it, the decisions make sense.

The weakest point, in my opinion, is the ending. 
That last part if very unrealistic, too much, I mean even if everything else is full of many coincidences, the husband of Wynter's mother's best friend is an epidemiologist, then the other man a veterinary expert in bacterial diseases, those could be counted as a lucky shot. The one thing that felt too much good fortune is the very end.

This story I might have not picked up simply because I expected this to be something very different from the cover and title. 
As you might have noticed, I never read the book description until I am done with the book and try to write the blog.
So I was surprised and underwhelmed.

It falls in the middle for me, it was ok but not as exceptional as I expected it to be, it had a bit too much convenient coincidences.