Emily Schultz

""She's a blonde," Moira speculated, but she wasn't talking about the woman's hair colour. She meant the disease."

The premise of "The Blondes" really intrigued me. A pandemic all over the world, that is not about where you live or whether you have access to clean water. It's all about the colour of your hair. As I am blonde myself, this should be a scary book.

"SHV - Siphonaptera Human Virus, after fleas, which they believed were involved in transmitting to women who were vulnerable to becoming hosts."

And it was. At least the bits and pieces about the virus. Lots of apocalyptic/dystopian novels only deal with the aftermath of an outbreak like this. We rarely get to see where it all began, and I never read anything where you can see it unfold. In "The Blondes" you get to see all of that. You see the first attack of a blonde first hand, because our main character Hazel is right there in that subway station in New York where it happens. These action packed scenes are really well written and grip you at your heart and soul.

More and more attacks happen, and you get to see how the world is slowly starting to piece it all together, and then freak out. Like majorly, "let's pack all women in quarantine camps and keep them there for up to eight weeks", freak out. The virus is a bit like rabies, where women go nuts and attack other women to infect them. All of that is really interesting, and I really enjoyed getting to see an apocalypse happen first hand, instead of just hearing about it years and years later. Emily Schultz did a great job integrating a pandemic outbreak into our every day lives, with people talking about it on Facebook, sharing videos about attacks on the internet etc…

"Within a week, National Geographic ran a fold-out colour map charting the attacks and outbreaks. New York had a bright red circle over John F. Kennedy International Airport. Land was shaded red all up and down the West Coast, starting in Los Angeles, which had the greatest concentration of cases and incidents, into Las Vegas, and up to San Francisco. Florida was like a sunburn, as were all the major cities and most of the south-eastern seaboard."

However, our main character Hazel Hayes just didn't interest me in the slightest. She is not a blond, which means there was never a real threat to keep you interested. She is naive, pregnant and makes a lot of stupid and unreasonable decisions in the process. I could not relate to her at all, which made half of the book really dull. I got invested in most of the other characters a lot more, and I hope we get a 2nd book just so I can read about what happened to them. I also had a bit of trouble relating to being her unborn child, since some of the story is written in 2nd person "you" form, meaning Hazel is speaking to you as if you were her unborn child. If I really was, I think I would just be kicking her all day for all the stupid decisions she makes.

"Still, this is where I've got to. I'm here in this cottage in the woods and the snow - stuck here."

But I can see that some people might like Hazel a bit more than I did, so I would definitely recommend giving this book a go. It might just be the right fit for you. The half of the story about the pandemic is definitely worth it.

With that being said, I was a little disappointed with how it all ended. It ended rather abruptly so I was hoping it would be a series, but I can't find any information on that anywhere. One can always hope. I would definitely read it.