Strange Exit by Parker Peevyhouse – Spoiler-Free Review

STRANGE EXIT
by Parker Peevyhouse

Tor Teen
January 14, 2020

From Goodreads:

Seventeen-year-old Lake spends her days searching a strange, post-apocalyptic landscape for people who have forgotten one very important thing: this isn’t reality. Everyone she meets is a passenger aboard a ship that’s been orbiting Earth since a nuclear event. The simulation that was supposed to prepare them all for life after the apocalypse has trapped their minds in a shared virtual reality and their bodies in stasis chambers.

No one can get off the ship until all of the passengers are out of the sim, and no one can get out of the sim unless they believe it’s a simulation. It’s up to Lake to help them remember.

When Lake reveals the truth to a fellow passenger, seventeen-year-old Taren, he joins her mission to find everyone, persuade them that they’ve forgotten reality, and wake them up. But time’s running out before the simulation completely deconstructs, and soon Taren’s deciding who’s worth saving and who must be sacrificed for the greater good. Now, Lake has no choice but to pit herself against Taren in a race to find the secret heart of the sim, where something waits that will either save them or destroy them all.

The good people at Tor Teen and NetGalley provided me with a digital ARC of Strange Exit in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This the second Parker Peevyhouse novel I’ve read and while I’m convinced she has an adoring audience, I don’t seem to fit in. 

I really like the premises she comes up with, but the novels never hit me the same way. I’m a very linear reader and I get the impression that Strange Exit would be enjoyed a lot more by non-linear readers who can follow the story no matter how many times it jumps off the track, does a 180, and backflips into something else.

Most of the time I was reading this book I just found myself confused. Confused where the story was going, and confused with why the characters did what they did. 

The resolution brought the experience up a little, just because I was able to make a bit of sense out of it, but overall this book just wasn’t up to my expectations.

I wanted to like this book, I really did, but unfortunately I just couldn’t.