Solar Fury by EA Chance, narrated by Eva Kaminsky – C+ I came across this book recently and saw it was available via Audible Plus with a trusted narrator so I decided to give it a try. The premise was really fascinating; a solar flare causes society to falter and suddenly nothing works anymore. No satellites, no GPS, no phones, no internet. The lead character is Dr. Riley Poole. She’s an orthopaedic surgeon who’s at a conference in Washington DC with her young teenage daughter, Julia, when the solar flare occurs. Riley is a widow with 3 children – that’s right -3. The other two were left at home in Colorado with her parents. The other two children don’t feature strongly in the book, apart from being the motivation for Riley to get home to them. It was also unclear exactly why Riley took Julia with her given that poor Julia had to spend her days in the hotel room while Riley was the conference. They did eat meals together and did some sightseeing after hours but as holidays for a teenager go, it wasn’t ideal. At the conference. Riley meets Dr. Neil Cooper (“Coop”), a respected heart surgeon and they strike up a flirtation. After the solar flare, Riley, Julia and Coop, together with a young girl whose parents are missing, go on the road trying to make it to Riley’s family in Colorado.  Over the course of the book, Coop and Riley become closer and there is a romantic HEA for them by the end. (That’s not really a spoiler – there are 2 other books in the series and the blurb for book 2 makes it obvious.)

I’m not an expert on solar flares but the setup seemed authentic to me and made for an interesting post-apocalyptic premise. But from there, things fell down a bit. Continue reading