I received this novel as an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
I have loved this series since I received my first ARC for it. I’ve never been scared of spiders, but The Hatching had me feeling differently. I loved both The Hatching and Skitter, the 2nd book in the series, so I was super excited to know how it would all conclude. Here is my review:
Summary (Goodreads): The world is on the brink of apocalypse. Zero Day has come.
The only thing more terrifying than millions of spiders is the realization that those spiders work as one. But among the government, there is dissent: do we try to kill all of the spiders, or do we gamble on Professor Guyer’s theory that we need to kill only the queens?
For President Stephanie Pilgrim, it’s an easy answer. She’s gone as far as she can—more than two dozen American cities hit with tactical nukes, the country torn asunder—and the only answer is to believe in Professor Guyer. Unfortunately, Ben Broussard and the military men who follow him don’t agree, and Pilgrim, Guyer, and the loyal members of the government have to flee, leaving the question: what’s more dangerous, the spiders or ourselves?
Review: For a novel that’s supposed to be about killer crazy spiders, there weren’t too many spider scenes.
I was hoping that this book would have crazy spider action and scare the bejeezus out of me. But I don’t think there was a spider scene until the halfway point of the book. Most of the story was just a lot of characters talking and politics. I think that the other novels in this series spoiled me for the last one; they were such high-impact, adrenaline-fueled stories that this one seemed like a bit of a let-down.
One of the things I had really loved about this series were the different perspectives that were included. I loved that there were some civilians and people from various areas of the world, all reeling from this spider issue. I was eager to see how these perspectives would converge in the end. However, after reading this final book, I question the necessity for all of those viewpoints and characters. So many of them just sputtered out in this book that it felt like it was all just a moot point. After having read about all of these different characters from the other 2 books in this series, I was quite disappointed with how their stories ended in this final book. Looking back, it might have been better for the author to only have focused on a few of the core story lines and left the unnecessary ones out, since it really didn’t add anything.
The writing was still great, which made this novel move along at a fast pace. Even though not a lot was happening in terms of action, all of the plot holes were filled and I appreciated that the author caught the readers up on things from the previous novels that may have been forgotten.
I know it sounds like I didn’t love this novel. And you’re right, I didn’t love it. But it was still quite good. I liked the writing, and the way the story ended. I was super invested in this series, which is probably why I enjoyed this last book despite it not being as action-packed as I had hoped. If you like creepy stories, I would definitely recommend checking this series out; it is honestly so good and it’s worth reading! I’m giving this book a 3/5 stars!
Happy reading ~