Love how deviously evil and treacherous the end turned out to be. Every one thought they were playing everyone else and in the end they all got fucked over. Oh how I loved it.

Bit saddening how most of my favorite characters are dead. Hopefully there are more brilliant revenge schemes to come.

4 Stars.

The narrator almost ruined this book for me. The only voice that I felt was done anywhere near the definition of 'well' was The Hammer's. And that's only because it sounded interesting and rather amusing, this big tough muscle man who hunts zom's for a living with this little high pitched, red-neck voice! classic.
Side note: I also had the occasionally difficulties telling the voices apart, who was saying what, etc. And some characters - I became quite confused over who 'the brothers' were, but that all got sorted out afterwards.

Anyways onto the important subject: My Issue.
The only issue I have with the narrator (its a bit of a doozey) is that he made everyone sound bland. Bland! in a zombie book! How on earth is that even possible. This guy had so many opportunities to make this book so much more and he just piddled them all away. These characters were guttered, devastated, fearful, in immense pain and vengeful....and yet the narrator for the most part just spoke every line, and just stated the emotion afterwards. No!! I want you to sound it out for me, I was to feel what they're going through. I want to feel their pain, misery and anticipation. It is after all a zombie book, it's what I signed on for!

So yea unfortunately the book was rather bland on the emotional side of things, luckily I still enjoyed the narrator reading the book to me enough that I plan on continuing - though I believe I'll be reading the next book myself.

Now off that subject, lets talk about the Characters.
Boy Benny was a whiny bitch wasn't he? goodness for someone who grew up in a world filled with zombies he sure whinged a lot. You think the kid would be a lot tougher. I am being serious when I say his main goal at the beginning of the book was to do the least amount of physical work, that wasn't exceptionally boring, that's it. His life goal - what a champ aye? luckily towards the end after his brother stopped coddling him - or should I say started paying attention to him, Benny grew up a lot. He became a decent sort, which is nice. His brother, Tom was pretty cool, like to drop his wisdom nuggets on all the other suckers, actually he would make a pretty good guidance counselor. Lol.
Nix was a fantastic character, not cliched, which is nice. Red hair, pale skin, short, freckles, (according to boy's who have no other females their age to go off - very attractive, with big boobies. Which of course is a very important character definition to teenage boys) incredibly intelligent, higher achiever, ambitious, loves learning and researching but is also physically strong, she neither this nor that, but a mixture of things. Willing to put in 110% effort into anything she try's. If anyone one is going to conquer this destroyed world its Nix. She also get's jealous, is incredibly poor, unwilling to take 'handouts' and possible doesn't have the best taste in boys. (yet to be determined).
The Lost Girl was a nice surprised, Maberry would have been boring and made her a hot babe, who kick zombie ass, and was incredibly flirty (the usual combo) but he wen't somewhere different with it, I won't say how - spoilers and all that, but I will say that I appreciated it. Quite a nice surprise.
Chong was a funny boy, and brilliant. I love his smart little lines that flew over Benny's head.
The others, were alright. The baddies, were actual realistic baddies. Someone you can easily picture being created based on the world they live in.

I Also want to point out and say kudos to Macberry for remarking on Benny's attempts to save the 'Lost Girl' from herself and her current lifestyle, and not understanding why she wouldn't except his 'gracious' offer. This is a common behaviour for humans, we note someone is living differently to us, maybe in a way we ourselves would not like to live, and offer them, usually with good intentions to change their living styles. Not taking into account that it is in fact their choice, and that they may be happy with it. Many countries and religious groups do this, Australia included. What I loved about how Macnerry handled this situation was he didn't have the girl accept their offer under pressure, or fold just because the others didn't, couldn't understand. They thought she was a bit nutty for her choices, sure. But they accepted them in the end, and didn't harass her afterwards about it. This I loved.

The zombies were good, not to intense but not without their strengths and the world was great - set 14(?) years after 'first night' which was a nice change from the usual. Overall an entertaining read. Looking forward to the next one.

I'm just going to be upfront and honest.... I had some issues with this book. The Veil could have been great, better than great even, but somehow got lost between the idea of this book and the finish product. I'm not really sure what it is that wen't wrong, though I suspect the characters are partially to blame, they just didn't pull me in. The book itself was fun and interesting, I loved the setting, which is based in New Orleans after a giant war between paranormals 'paras' and the human population, who barely won and are still facing the consequences. Unfortunately the powers were rather mediocre - been there done that, but how they came about was superb and unique. The same could be said for the characters actually, they were rather been there, done that. I felt as though I should have loved them, but they just..... didn't feel genuine? I suppose. Something about them felt off and I didn't connect with them. I actually had to push myself to pick up this book. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it, just that I didn't feel the need to read it, but I was determined to finish it. Besides I wanted to know what happened at the end - which was a bit of a plot disaster.
I'm warning you now I'm about to spill some spoilers.
The book spent all this time building up towards the end, legit 95% of the book, then we had our battle about 5 pages from the end. And just like that the battle was over, took all of 2 seconds to read! I felt rather let down. To top it off its not enough that they have to deal with all the ramifications of an upcoming war, traitors, learning how to utilize their power and people turning evil they also had a nice little personal bomb dropped on Claire's head where her mother isn't actually dead like she had always believe but possibly playing for the 'bad side' - who mind you are a bunch of uninformed nutters hell bound on killing everyone for the good of man kind, because the misguided idiots think they can kick ass. Sigh.

Anywho, as I was saying, this book had all the potential to be amazing, but for me just came short of the mark. I'm sure other's are going to devour it, what with all the hot studs running around, all the details of what said studs look like, how good their pants fit their bootys, and all the hot and sweaty dancing (it is NO after all) chuck in a few paras, some kind-of secretive evil guys, sleuthing and action and I'm sure this right up a lot of people alleys. For now I'm going to be skipping the rest of the series, I'm glad I read the first book but can think of many other books I would prefer to read before starting The Sight. Maybe after I have finished all those I may give it a shot.

Much better than I was anticipating. I thought I would have an issue with the substance abuse (and I did, partially) but Kanes world, characters and writing far outweighed any negative views I might have had.

I felt Chess's substance abuse issue were portrayed realistically (not that I've ever had an addiction problem, so I can't say for sure but it seems on par with what I know about it). I did have a issue with the drugs being used in a 'positive' way to fight evil, and I held little sympathy for chess herself and the situations she got herself into, even though I enjoyed reading from her POV, and didn't mind her personality (she could be annoying and exceptionally dump)

The character that really shined for me was..... I'd never thought I'd say this...... Terrible. He is such a fascinating character with so many secrets and mysteries, plus he over all is a pretty decent guy.... well except for the beating people for a living thing, but hey at least he doesn't get off on it! lol.
It would be interesting to see Chess from his eyes. I looked forward to seeing their relationship bloom further.

The other characters..... well I felt they were mainly there for conveniences sake, to pull Chess's strings when needed or to be obstacles to 'deepen' the plot, but who knows maybe they won't seem so two-dimensional in the next books?
And hopefully the villain will be more interesting..... how Chess didn't figure it out earlier is beyond me.

4 Stars.

This song/lyrics reminds me so much of Chess and her relationship with drugs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMlcn-_jpWY&feature=youtu.be

Though ignore the actual music video, its interesting, but to me gives a different vibe to the lyrics on there own.

Not a bad book. It did take me a while to get into the flow of the writing style, I don't know if the author was trying to make a strange accent for the characters (redneck?) or she just has an unusual style, but once i finally got the hang of it I started enjoying Not A Drop To Drink a lot more.
Also the cover is rather misleading, yea there's a house and a pond but otherwise based of the authors descriptions the scene looks quite a bit different. For one there should be a lot more tree's around.

Spoilers Ahead
So I'm a bit to tired to pinpoint quite why I didn't like this book as much as others, maybe it wasn't as well written, or the characters weren't as likable or maybe just because the topic has been done to death (though i find if the other two things are done well enough the topic doesn't matter) the back story and time frame left much to be desired, the author was rather vague about it all. I had only a fuzzy idea of how old Lynn was, no idea how long the story went on for except for some hints because of weather change, and the Epilogue just said a 'few years had past' like that's bloody helpful. Either way there was some draw backs, so I'm only rating this book 3 stars. It would have been 2 except I started enjoying Lynn's POV quite a bit around the second half of the book. She had a sly humour that was similar enough to my own that i caught myself occasionally laughing. Her growth in personality was also fun to watch, I much preferred Lynn after her mum died and Stebbs came into the picture (Stebbs was awesome) though when her mother first died I wanted to bash Lynn upside the head for being so stupid, but one can't force people to be rational in their grief I suppose.
Afterwards Lynn started to shine as a character, she was a rather cold-hearted bitch (always makes for a great MC) but somehow gathered a few tag alongs. Lynn's relationship with Lucy was superbly done, I don't think I've read a similar relationship before in this genre, it was really wonderful to watch.

Lynn had some nice moral struggles that helped make her interesting plus her lack of knowledge about he modern world and a good mix of faults and strengths Helped. Lynn had a love interest who perished in a rather spectacular way (not that uncommon in dyspotia, but i was still impressed) then at the end she shot her father in the face!! it was a pretty spectacular scene - really i would recommend reading the book just for this one scene.
Otherwise not bad. Not sure I'll go out of my way to hunt down more McGinnis books, but i won't turn them down if I randomly come across some.