Fierce Kingdom-A Book Review

This book was recommended by my favorite You Tube guy, Christopher. I bought it on Audible and listened to it rather than reading it. I wonder if this is the kind of book I would have rather read!

The story begins when a mom and her four year old son, Lincoln, are ending their day at the zoo. They are walking to the exit when mom suddenly becomes aware of what she thought were some of the zoo's Halloween decorations, lying on the ground. As she gets closer, she realizes they are bodies. Now she knows that the sound she had mistaken for fireworks earlier were in fact gun shots. And  she needs to run and hide.

The first part of the book deals with mom hiding in the zoo and trying to keep her boy quiet. He is a very precocious kid and this will be hard. We hear him whining, asking a lot of questions, needing to go to the bathroom and becoming hungry. The book chapters are laid out in time frames, from 5:23 p.m to 8:05 p.m. I really, really enjoyed the first part of the book. There were parts that literally made the hair on the back of my neck stand out. Scary! And then it started to drag a bit. And some of it seemed a bit unrealistic. I'm not sure things would have REALLY happened the way the writer wrote it. And, besides the boy, I didn't think the remainder of the characters were as well developed as they could have been.

I won't give away the ending here, but I found it to be unsatisfying! I like things to be tied up in a neat little package. With a big red bow! And this didn't happen. You are left with a couple of options of how the story could have ended. 

Overall it was a decent listen. Because I found it to be a "good" book I will give it a *** rating. Have you read it? Is it on your 'to be read' list?