Poppy Bloom

Life After Us, Book 1

By: Rebekah Dodson

Narrated by: Tara Tyler

Vicki Morel believes she and Will, her gorgeous fiancé, have it all. They’re living the American dream. That is, until Portland, Oregon, is leveled by a terrorist-grade light weapon, and she loses Will at the airport.

Ambrose Palamo is an aviation student who wants one thing: to go home to Samoa. But when Portland is leveled, and he meets Vicki, he promises to help her find her fiancé instead. What he doesn't expect is the feelings that start to form for her as they search the dangerous Oregon woodlands.

Sometimes love isn't what you think it is. The poppies bloom reminds them of what they’ve lost, while giving them the courage to face a brand-new future.

©2019 Rebekah Dodson (P)2021 Rebekah Dodson

Exciting and a little break breaking

I really liked the story, lots of drama mixed with heartbreak and hopes of getting through this alive and finding peace.
Vicki and Ambrose are beautiful together, looking forward to the next 2 books, hoping they get their HEA together.

Audio needs work

Interesting start to a series.
The worlds gone to crap.
Trigger warnings needed - racism, war, cheating, violence & death.

Short but to the point. Lots of action.
3 star listen, narration was average because chapter 9 has two people talking at the same time narrating different parts of the book. I had to skip the chapter.

Book ends in a Cliffhanger.

Poppy Bloom

The storyline kept me interested and the main characters were well developed. I only wish it wasn't a cliff-hanger.

There were some minor audio issues throughout. A portion of chapter 9 was very difficult to listen to as there were overlapping audio tracks running at the same time.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and I have voluntarily left this review.

Lots of potential, poor narrator.

This is set a bit into the future during a very unsettling time—I was intrigued by the world building straight away. I couldn’t help but notice that this would be more gripping with better writing—it was more prone to ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’, so at times my attention was more forced than natural.

There’s no shortage of action and rage-inducing moments in this dark world. With better writing and an actual human-sounding person performing rather than just robotically reading, I feel this would be an unputdownable read worthy of 5 stars.

As it stands though, it’s around 3 stars. Could do with a developmental edit and heavy revision, as there are really good bones here. Dark, intriguing times in a slightly futuristic setting and one-dimensional characters that could fairly easily be evolved a bit.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️


Audio:
The narration was a little tough to take, as it sounded very robotic. I was nearly 1 chapter in before I realized it is indeed a human, when it pronounced “confiscated” more like ‘confinscated’. Will not listen to anything by this narrator again. 2- star ‘performance’, using this word very loosely as there was no performance to be found here.

I fear this narrator preyed upon this author, other authors: beware.
Readers: if you're able, best to go for digital or print format.

Skip this one, bad narrator

This doesn't seem to have much substance to it, but I couldn't get past the narrator to finish. Overdone performance and the female characters sounds like whiny teenage valley girls.