Review - Zoo by James Patterson

Zoo by James Patterson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Paperback, 416 pages

Published August 30th 2012 by Century (first published January 1st 2012)

Source: Own Copy
Challenges: What an Animal Reading Challenge, Genre Variety Challenge, A-Z Title Challenge

Synopsis:
'New York. Mexico. India. California. All around the world, brutal attacks are crippling entire cities. It isn't the work of terrorists, but of animals, and their somehow coordinated assaults are escalating at a terrifying pace.

Jackson Oz, a young biologist, watches the events with an increasing sense of dread. A coordinated lion ambush in Africa demonstrates the enormity of the violence to come. Could it be the beginning of an all-out war on mankind?

With the help of ecologist Chloe Tousignant, Oz races to warn world leaders before it's too late. The attacks are growing in ferocity, and soon there will be no place left for humans to hide.'

My Thoughts:
Well, everyone would know that I was so excited to finally get my hands on this book as I'd been looking forward to reading it from the day I first heard about it being released. But, unfortunately that was where the excitement finally ended.
For some reason this book just didn't end up grabbing me like I thought it would and I actually felt a little flat while reading it.
The storyline itself was fascinating and kind of scary because it's very realistic and makes you keep thinking 'what if this ever really did happen?' so I have to definitely give credit there, but I think the short and crisp writing style which is trademark Patterson just didn't work with a plot that to me could have been made much more complex and built upon so much more to really engage the reader.
I also kept jumping between liking the main character Oz, to thinking he was a very bland and unemotional character. There were some parts where his reaction to the situation just didn't seem to fit and this made the story feel a little disjointed to me every now and then.
There was also a lot of jumping between different narratives in a lot of the chapters and sometimes this left me feeling quite confused until I got a few paragraphs into it and realised that we were now seeing things from a different point of view.
I can't really say much about the ending either as it really wasn't what I was expecting and I still haven't been able to make up my mind as to whether I can accept it or not.
Overall, the theme of this book is very close to home and makes you wonder what humanity is really heading towards the more we invest every aspect of our lives in technology, but the actual storytelling just didn't do it for me unfortunately. I just felt that this book had the potential to do so much more......

Links:
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