Nightfall by Ellen Connor

Hey everyone,

Today I’m going to review Nightfall by Ellen Connor, an apocalyptic romance book that I’ve had on my to-be-read pile for far too long. I love dystopian romance books so I went in with high expectations, particularly as this one seemed to have an unusual twist on the sub-genre.

The book:

Growing up with an unstable, often absent father who preached about the end of the world, Jenna never thought in her wildest nightmares that his predictions would come true. Or that he would have a plan in place to save her--one that includes the strong, stoic man who kidnaps and takes her to a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest.

The mysterious ex-soldier named Mason owes a life-debt to Jenna's father. Skilled and steadfast, he's ready for the prophesied Change, but Jenna proves tough to convince. Until the power grid collapses and mutant dogs attack--vicious things that reek of nature gone wrong.

When five strangers appear, desperate to escape the bloodthirsty packs, Jenna defies her protector and rescues them. As technology fails and the old world falls away, Jenna changes too, forever altered by supernatural forces. To fight for their future, she and Mason must learn to trust their instinctive passion--a flame that will see them through the bitter winter, the endless nights, and the violence of a new Dark Age.

My thoughts:

My feelings are divided over Nightfall because some aspects I loved and thought were amazing, but unfortunately other parts I couldn’t stand.

Dystopian Romance Books

Hello readers,

Now if you’ve been reading romance for a while you’ve probably noticed that there are defined tropes or themes that authors and readers return to again and again. Now although this sounds like a bad thing it really isn’t and in fact one of my favourite things to do is binge on a trope. At the moment I’m obsessed with dystopian, apocalypse, zombie style romances, basically anything were society, as we know it has crumbled or broken down. Obviously this is an extremely popular style of book at the moment, particularly within the young adult genre. I blame the Hunger Games trilogy.

In this post I’m going to talk about my favourite romance novels that incorporate this theme, some of them are quite well known and if you’ve read them I loved to hear your thoughts. This is not, of course an exhaustive list as that would take forever, but instead a small selection that show the diversity of this trope. I hope that you will like the following post and now let’s get started.

I’m going to begin with the most well known book on my list, which is The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook.

Now I know some of you would be reluctant to call The Iron Duke a dystopian romance and while I agree that it does sit more comfortably in the world of steampunk, I still believe that this is a story about a society in crisis, or at least one recovering from crisis. The first novel in the extremely popular Iron Seas Series The Iron Duke introduces the reader into an England that has been destroyed by Horde control, the majority of people were enslaved and could be turned into mindless drones with little or no free-thought due to the use of nanobots. Not only is this a country recovering from Horde control it is also part of a world that is suffering from zombie infestation with most of Africa and Europe being a dangerous wasteland.