The Harvesting: The Harvesting Series Book 1

Interesting take on a zombie story. The author has created a bunch of great new characters and storyline in this series. I find that this author really is a great storyteller. Get the books and leave your reviews.

4.5/5 Stars (RabidReads.com)Zombie dystopian? Sign me up! I admit that I am a huge Walking Dead Fan, although I fought against watching it. I ended up binge watching three seasons in about 5 days. So this book appealed to me as soon as I read a review by Kimberly from Caffeinated Book Reviews of a later book in the series.Layla is an expert in ancient weapons and works in Washington D.C. She is called home to her grandmother’s house. Her grandmother has a lot of magic inside her and “sees” things that are going to happen. Layla ends up in a boarded up home, full of supplies, and it’s not long before a flu of some sort takes out most of the small town. Only the dead are still walking, and they are hungry for human flesh.Layla ends up being pretty kick ass, especially since she brought some of her ancient weapons with her. Her grandmother had thought of everything, so the house has grenades and automatic weapons. It’s not long before Layla is running things amidst the forty something people that are left. Two of the survivors are her ex-boyfriend, Ian, and his brother, Jamie. Jamie never really registered on her radar before because of Ian, but he does now, and in a big way. He ended up being a really take charge kind of guy, way more so than Ian.This book takes place over a several month period. The reader goes along for the ride, while Layla and the rest ride out a winter without electricity, or any outside help. And what a ride this was. There’s lots of supernatural things happening with Layla, and she now can see that humans are not alone, and I am not talking about just the zombies. On top of this there is quite the twist to the premise later on in the story and it ended up being pretty scary, as well as taking the story into a completely different direction.The author calls this book horror or dark fantasy. I just consider it dystopian, and that usually is dark fantasy. And yes, there are horror components of course. It was a partial day read for me as I could not put it down. I should have known better than to start reading it in the middle of the night!Spunky heroine and caring hero, plenty of action, violence, and kick butt moments made this an exciting read. The premise of zombies, has of course been done many times before, but the twist added so much more to the story, and I ended up being glad for it-sort of, anyway. And that’s because the plot was a bit Walking Deadish, previous to that. Not that The Walking Dead is bad!I ended up buying the next book as soon as I finished this one, because I can’t wait to see what happens next. I think it’s an adult read due to the very dark subject matter, violence, language, etc, however the author says it’s PG-13. No sexual scenes, but it’s assumed that it’s probably happening. I highly recommend this to adult, dark paranormal readers.

This book was soooo good!!! It has a bit of everything.When Layla is called home by her grandmother, she knows something must be seriously wrong. Her grandmother doesn't call her home in such a mysterious manner for no reason. When she arrives, she finds her grandmothers home changed! There is a chain link fence all around the property and her windows seemed to be boarded up. Layla wants answers but all her grandmother does is hand her a massive shopping list and tells her to buy everything on it. Layla obeys as she knows her grandmother won't answer questions till she is ready. Layla heads off to get everything from food, bottled water and batteries to odd things like holy water. It reads to Layla like a list for someone preparing to hole up in preparation for a storm.A storm is coming in the shape of a mysterious virus. As Layla watches events unfold on the news, the virus hits her small town and the dead seem to be rising! Layla realises her grandmother saw this happen, which is why she called Layla back. Laylas grandmother tells her she must protect the town and its inhabitants. What follows is one heck of a ride for both Layla and us!!!I think the best thing about this book, for me anyway, was Layla!! She was absolutely kick ass and awesome. This is a woman who teaches people how to use old weapons like the Shashka and Katana. Her blade of choice is the Shashka and it comes in extremely useful when a Zombie apocalypse comes ;) She is level headed, brave and smart and it's hard to not to root for her. On top of the Zombies, she is also dealing with the fact that she seems to have inherited her grandmothers physic ability and is now seeing forest spirits talking to her!! Yet she never loses her focus and does everything she can to keep everyone safe.Another major plus for this book was the world building! We start off with the Zombies but interwoven throughout is the introduction of various other supernatural beings. Like the forest spirits, ghosts and other things! It was spectacularly done!!This book is such an amazing one that I'm surprised it isn't more popular! The characters were all amazing, especially Layla and her Grandmother, the world may be bleak but it is extremely well built and developed and the whole book is full of twists, turns and action, that I flew through this in no time! I can't wait to dive back into this world and see what happens Layla and her crew!Kristin James did a great job with the narration. She was easy to follow and had plenty of different cadences. I loved her voice for Grandmother!! I will definitely check out more by her.*I received a copy of this for review. This in no way affected my thoughts.*

This popped up as a free book, first in the series, and after reading the bio I downloaded.Wow so glad I did.This book grabbed me from the start!It started with 'flu' moving onto zombies and fighting to survive, then finishing with vampires.....soooo my kind of book!Throw in romance and other spirits etc and you've got the first book leaving you wanting MORE!

I was actually very surprised by how much I enjoyed the story, didn't think it would be my kind of zompoc book but I'm glad I bought it very enjoyable and well written, off to buy the second one 😊

Zombies and vampires but not as we know them. A fast moving book, which I couldn't put down. Who exactly are our survivors, who are they becoming, and why them? I can't wait to find out more.

Zombie apocalypse. The theme been around the block a few times. Despite being in a congested genre this book managed to be an enjoyable read. Slow start though, but worth the effort of plodding through it.

If you like a good supernatural read then you won't be dissapointed with this. It has swords, forest spirits, zombies and vampires with a little bit of a love triangle too (the love triangle doesn't get in the way of the action though).