The Rapture - Liz Jensen

[goodreads]

Title: The Rapture
Author: Liz Jensen
Genre: dystopian
Rating: 2.5/5
# pages: 348
Date read: March 2011

In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake.

Raised on a diet of evangelistic hellfire, Bethany is violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters - a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion. But when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, and a brilliant, gentle physicist enters the equation, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator, or could she be the harbinger of imminent global cataclysm on a scale never seen before?

I wavered between a rating of two or three. It was slightly more than just okay, but I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to say I liked it.

The plot sounded fascinating - a girl in a psychiatric ward finds herself able to predict natural catastrophes. I'm not sure I entirely agreed with the execution of it though. It kept me entertained while reading it, and with the recent events in New Zealand, China and Japan it was scarily relevant. However, as I turned the last page, I felt that there were far too many issues left unexplained and far too many threads left open. I always get frustrated when supernatural events *just happen* and aren't explained in some way that's believable in the context of the story.

In short I guess the book is best described as a pre-dystopian book with a definite judgement day influence.