ARC Review: Zero Repeat Forever (The Nahx Invasions #1) by Gabrielle Prendergast

He has no voice, or name, only a rank, Eighth. He doesn’t know the details of the mission, only the directives that hum in his mind.

Dart the humans. Leave them where they fall.

His job is to protect his Offside. Let her do the shooting.

Until a human kills her…

Sixteen year-old Raven is at summer camp when the terrifying armored Nahx invade, annihilating entire cities, taking control of the Earth. Isolated in the wilderness, Raven and her friends have only a fragment of instruction from the human resistance.

Shelter in place.

Which seems like good advice at first. Stay put. Await rescue. Raven doesn’t like feeling helpless but what choice does she have?

Then a Nahx kills her boyfriend.

Thrown together in a violent, unfamiliar world, Eighth and Raven should feel only hate and fear. But when Raven is injured, and Eighth deserts his unit, their survival comes to depend on trusting each other…

****Huge thank you to Simon & Schuster for sending me an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!****

I really, really wanted to enjoy this book more because the premise sounds fantastic and I’m always up for a good sci-fi with aliens invading Earth! Unfortunately there really wasn’t much to salvage here and that disappoints me.

Trigger Warnings: Racism, Abuse (Mostly Emotional and Verbal), and Suicidal Thoughts

Where do I even start?

First of all the pacing was terribly slow all the way throughout the book, sure there were a few action scenes that were pretty good but they didn’t last very long and we’d get dumped right back into the tediousness. There weren’t really any plot twists to speak of and like I said the action was few and far between. It was boring to be frank.

Events that occurred throughout the plot felt really forced and too convenient at times. “Oh you’re going to die out in the cold passed out and your friends have abandoned you? Here is another character that will carry you back towards  your friends and build you fire to keep you warm until you wake back up.” Come on, are you kidding me? At least make me worry for the characters a little bit, show me they have actual survival skills since that’s what this book is about!

Then to make matters worse it took half the book for Eighth and Raven to even meet up, which is indicated in the synopsis. I didn’t want to wait that long for the “main plot line” to commence. On top of that a good third of the book is just Eighth nursing Raven back to health, seriously, that’s a third of the book. It was so incredibly boring and then there’s even a bit of Stockholm Syndrome too. Why did that need to last so long? Development? Development that didn’t actually develop anything or anyone at all?

Then that ending………I liked the cliffhanger it makes me consider reading the sequel but I’ll still probably pass. The only BIG plot twist that happened in the entire book is “revealed” at the end and it was 100% predictable, I am not joking I predicted this twist at the beginning of the book. That’s no fun.

As for the world building there really wasn’t much of that at all but what bits there were, were very interesting. Mostly we got some insight into the invading aliens (Nahx) from Eighth’s POV which were the only parts I enjoyed.

It only took me 50 pages in to realize I really did not like Prendergast’s writing style, at all. It felt extremely choppy and didn’t flow, it was really forced and I had a hard time reading through it.

The characters were just as messy, flat, and underdeveloped. If all of them had died during my reading of this book I wouldn’t have cared in the least bit. I actually might have been rooting for the Nahx to take everyone out so I could be finished with this book.

Eighth was an okay character and the only moderately likable character since most of the time he’s pretty innocent and adorable because he doesn’t know much.

Raven I did not care for, I thought her temper and cruelty were too over the top at times. I understand that she’s a flawed character and she had her reasons for that since she was bullied as a child but I really don’t think there’s an excuse for treating others so abusively. Raven was just a very rude character that didn’t make the best of decisions either, not a fan.

The secondary characters were all just as bad too, basically cardboard cut out characters. No one had personality and if they all vanished I wouldn’t have cared either.

Someone save me! This romance was so cringe-worthy!

There was insta-love to the max! Why was he so obsessed with her right away? What’s the reasoning here? Eighth honestly was ready to do anything for Raven, anything!  It made no sense!

Plus there’s sort of a love triangle since Raven technically has another love interest and also still isn’t over her dead boyfriend.

Overall….not too impressed with this book and I’m really disappointed.

What I Loved:

• What little world building there was
• Eighth was pretty adorable at times

What I Didn’t Love:

• Slow pacing
• Events felt forced and too convenient
• Writing was choppy
• Characters were very flat
• Raven was very verbally abusive to others
• The big reveal at the end was predictable
• Insta-love, cringey romance
• Nothing substantial happened with the story

Sadly I can’t say I’d really recommend “Zero Repeat Forever” since I just had so many different issues with it. Overall I just thought it was poorly executed and very tedious to read through.

Links: Goodreads / Amazon / Book Depository