The Storm by Virginia Bergin Review

The Storm by Virginia Bergin

“We are the orphaned children of the apocalypse, and we will come home.”

The Storm starts with Ruby living at home, waiting for her dad and slowly driving herself crazy.  Stuck in the same house for weeks/months, Ruby’s isolation leads her to lose all sense of time until a car crash has her spiralling back into reality and also the surprising visit from Saskia.

My favourite thing about this duology is that the plot for the book is unpredictable. There’s just so much packed into the book and it somehow works. The book follows Ruby as she visits familiar places from the first book and realises something about her sets her apart from others. This book is the kind of adventure book you really want to see turned into a movie.

I really like the writing style of the book as its different in the sense Ruby’s voice would be better suited for a humour/realistic fiction book but Ruby‘s such a great character that you just can’t help but enjoy the book.

Ruby goes through a lot of character development in book one but I think in this book Ruby goes through more personal and mental changes. From depression to anxiety and from choosing herself over others.

There are a lot of clichés in this book like the government/army doing things like mutating children. But they aren’t fully delved into which showed they aren’t a major story in the book.

Most of the characters are from the previous book are in this one aside from some extra characters but most of them were likable but not really important to the story. Also with this story there are the main characters that you follow throughout the story whilst the other minor characters are seen only in parts of the story. It’s sort of a road trip story.

Ruby and Darius – they make such a good couple but we don’t see enough of them! Every time they meet something or someone has to keep them apart. But they’re really cute together.

I really liked the pacing of the story but near the ending everything seemed quite rushed. Everything was being solved way too quickly and then there’s Ruby’s ‘what she would have wanted to happen’ scene which was slightly pointless. However I really enjoyed how the ending – an epilogue of sorts stayed true to the writing style and showed how everything might be slowly improving but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t leave mental scars.

★★★★☆