Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle by Katie Coyle

The predicted Rapture by Pastor Frick’s Church of America has come and gone, and three thousand Believers are now missing or dead. Seventeen-year-old Vivian Apple and her best friend, Harpreet, are revolutionaries, determined to expose the Church’s diabolical power grab . . . and to locate Viv’s missing heartthrob, Peter Ivey.
 
This was an okay follow-up to the fabulous Vivian Apple at the End of the World.  I guess I was expecting it to have as much of an impact as the first book did, but for me it fell a bit short.
 
So the rapture happened, or didn’t, and now everyone’s waiting for the second boat and society is still pretty much falling to bits and no one save two seventeen year olds is questioning the fact that the Church of America seem to be doing extraordinarily well, financially, out of this whole apocalypse thing.
 
Vivian and Harp, against all odds, find themselves working with a rebellion group who are working against the Church.  There’s still a lot of philosophical debate in this book, but it centres more around the question ‘Is one type of fundamentalism better than another type of fundamentalism?’  And I think we can all agree, without too much debate, that the answer is ‘No’.
 
I think I just prefer my heroes in survival situations, when they are the little guy fighting for their lives against the big bad dictator/dystopian society/evil religion.  Once the baddie gets semi-defeated but before they are ultimately-defeated and the story is all about the hero having to try and forge their way in the rebel alliance and everything’s a bit political - that doesn’t really float my boat so much.
 
To put it this way: I thought Mockingjay was the weakest of the three Hunger Games books.
 
I’m not saying that this book is bad as such.  Katie Coyle is a competent writer and I still liked the characters.  I just didn’t love the plot so much in this one.
 
I still loved Viv - she shows so much growth over the course of the two books, and none of it feels forced.  Harpreet is still basically who I want to be.  She’s amazeballs.
 
This book is totally worth reading if you enjoyed the first in the duology.  I just didn’t love it quite as much.

3 stars