Zoo Book Review

Rating: 3 out of 4 stars

Title: Zoo

Author: James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Published: 2012

Publisher: Hachette Book Group

ISBN: 9781455525157

All over the world, brutal attacks are crippling entire cities. Jackson Oz, a young biologist, watches the escalating events with an increasing sense of dread. When he witnesses a coordinated lion ambush in Africa, the enormity of the violence to come becomes terrifyingly clear. Now with the help of ecologist Chloe Tousignant, Oz must race to warn world leaders before it’s too late. But the attacks are growing in ferocity, cunning, and planning—and soon there will be no place left for humans to hide…

I started watching the show Zoo about a month ago. I LOVED it. When I found out it was a book I was so excited!

I loved all of the characters in the show and just knew that this was going to be such a great read. Well, I get the book and within the first few chapters I was so upset! I didn’t like it at all.

What really upset me were the characters. I didn’t like any of them. My favorite one was Abraham in the show, but I didn’t like him at all in the book. With such disappointment in the characters, I found that I couldn’t pick up this book for 3 days. Then yesterday I decided I was just going to dive in and read it. The more I read it the more I felt better about this book.

My biggest issue was that I felt no connection with any of the characters. There was barely any information provided about them outside of the situation that was occurring in the world. They were just there. It made me not care about the characters. I didn’t care if the animals got to them or not because I didn’t feel anything for them. They were also all around unlikable. I felt that the show did much better job in that aspect. Chloe for instance, she was continuously written as weak and fragile. In the show, Chloe kicks some ass, I loved her character. There was also a lot of repetition. They would describe a person and then use the exact same description a few chapters later. There were also many characters they seemed to simply forget about. For instance, Jackson has a Chimp, Atilla. When he has to take an impromptu trip his landlady was supposed to check in on him, like she normally does. They continuously mention this, but she doesn’t check on Atilla and her character just drops off the face of the earth. It was strange and left me wondering what happened to her and other characters.  I don’t know if I am simply biased because I watched the show first, but the book left me disappointed.

The reason I gave it a 3 out of 4 is because all around the concept was good. Once I put aside my bias I enjoyed the story better. One of the most telling things in the novel was the reactions of humans, when a temporary solution was discovered. All though it is fiction; I could definitely see people around the world choosing their comforts over their lives. This is a very sad truth, but it is seen everywhere. If someone tells people to turn off their cell phones in waiting rooms, people generally don’t do it. They would rather having the comfort of their phone then following a simply policy for 5 minutes. This book showed just how selfish and detrimental people like this could be.

All in all, I would recommend this book. It was honestly not a bad read. Like I said, I held a bias because of my love for the show. After reading the book, I would recommend watching the show. You can find Season 1 on Netflix, and I heard that they are filming season 2. Yay!!!

Have you watched the show or read the book? What are your thoughts?