Zero Day
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15
Ratings1
Average rating2
Eight years ago, Addie Webster was the victim of the most notorious kidnapping of the decade. Addie vanished-and her high-profile parents were forced to move on. Mark Webster is now president of the United States, fighting to keep the Oval Office after a tumultuous first term. Then the unthinkable happens: the president's daughter resurfaces. Addie is brought back into her family's fold... but who is this sixteen-year-old girl with a quiet, burning intelligence now living in the White House? There are those in the administration who find her timely return suspicious. When a national security advisor approaches Darrow Fergusson, Addie's childhood best friend and the son of the president's chief of staff, he doesn't know what to think. How could the girl he's missed for all these years be a threat to the United States? Still, at the risk of having his own secrets exposed, Darrow agrees to spy on Addie. He soon realizes that his old friend is much more than the traumatized victim of a sick political fringe group. Addie has come home with a mission...but will she choose to complete it?
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Of all of the Young Adult books I've read, there are many that have a solid premise that draws me in. This is Not the End, for example, has a premise of a young girl who has the ability to bring back one person on her 18th birthday and she must choose between her boyfriend, her best friend, or her brother. Then there is Zero Day. Zero Day is about a teenage girl named Addie Webster. 8 years ago, when she was a young girl, she was abducted from her home and taken in by a terrorist group. Now she mysteriously returns at 16 to her parents, right when her father just happens to be President of the United States. There are many who would call this suspicious, and now Addie must prove that she is innocent of any wrongdoing. Or is she?
This was a premise that fascinated me, as I have been reading about the Presidents (one biography each, in order) for the past few years now. I was excited to see what this author would do with a terrorist threat and a girl surviving years in a terrorist camp beside. Sadly, this author does not seem to satisfy me on the terrorist front, nor on Addie Webster's time with a terrorist organization.
This book sadly does not have many positive points for me, but there is at least one that I can think of. I think that the first act is very well done. Seeing Addie Webster struggle to put her life back together while we understand what exactly happened to her was fascinating to read, especially as we see her come to terms with the fact that the world has changed now that nearly a decade has passed since she last saw her family and friends. It was a fun portion of the book to read about.
But that is it in terms of positive things to say. The rest of this book is filled with parts that I didn't like or parts that could have been re-written.
One of them is the way the author handles computers and technology in the book. There are scenes that should be considered impossible, like Addie being able to hack the White house servers in 5 minutes, but that needs to happen for the sake of the plot. Then there is how Addie is handled in this story. the author is trying to convince us that she is very smart and worthy to be respected, but then she isn't able to figure out that she is just a pawn in the larger terrorist plot. While true, one could argue that she has been attached to these people for 8 years, and she is brainwashed, but the author does not really communicate this very well to the reader, perhaps in a way to keep a balance between us liking her and pitying her as a person.
Then there is the YA-ness of it all. Multiple times, there is drama for your mamma in terms of issues that come up for Addie, including finding out that her best friend once dated her sister! Gasp! Then there are scenes leading up to Prom, and figuring out who will go with who and why or why not. It has the hallmarks of YA with none of the skill to pull it off for readers who do not care about that sort of thing.
Finally, there is the ending. While I won't spoil it completely, the book ends on a cliffhanger. What makes it worse is that the author has openly stated she has no plans to make this a series, with the book being intended as a standalone. This, for me, makes this book worthy of a low score and is what tempted me to just skim through the end of the book. I powered through, though, to find that people were right, and this is what sours the whole reading experience for me.
It is this final factor that makes me want to give this book a zero out of five (get it?) but I'll settle for a two out of five. While the first act was fun and exciting, it was not enough to keep me entertained, and the ending definitely spoiled this book for me. You may be able to give this book a pass but I will not.
