Sunday Book Club - White Horse by Alex Adams

Before: I took life for granted. 

After:  I will do anything to survive.

The world has ended, but her journey has just begun. 

Thirty-year-old Zoe leads an ordinary life until the end of the world arrives. She is cleaning cages and floors at Pope Pharmaceuticals when the president of the United States announces that human beings are no longer a viable species. When Zoe realizes that everyone she loves is disappearing, she starts running. Scared and alone in a shockingly changed world, she embarks on a remarkable journey of survival and redemption. Along the way, Zoe comes to see that humans are defined not by their genetic code, but rather by their actions and choices. White Horse offers hope for a broken world, where love can lead to the most unexpected places.

This is Alex Adam's debut novel and is first novel in the White Horse Trilogy.  

Alex Adams was born in Auckland, New Zealand. She lived in Greece and Australia before settling in Portland, Oregon. In between moving continents, Alex received a BA from the University of New England in Armidale, Australia and went on to teach English as a Second Language.

Deb says:  It may be a character flaw, but I really enjoy stories about what happens at the end of the world as we know it.  The protagonist, Zoe, seems so real and so human; however, her universe turns awfully scary and inhuman. I could identify with her restlessness with "normal" life and her will to try and make things right once that life was irrecoverably lost.

White Horse is a virus and it can mutate DNA, which makes horrific human creatures of some of the people, death for most, and allows some humans to unleash their already monstrous natures. Ms. Adams has no problems letting you see just how bad things could be. Although by the end of the novel I was crying, I always kept rooting for Zoe, through many twists and turns. 

The prose is also beautiful and more than a little bit frightening.  If you like Dystopian ideas try this debut novel, it is both different and well worth it.

Please let us know if you, like our book club idea,  read this recommendation or if you have some of your own! 

Alex Adams' website