Review: Sanctuary (Seeking Asylum Series Book 1) by SM Olivier

Sanctuary by S.M. Olivier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Superb Dystopian Fiction

I’d probably give this 4.5 ⭐️ if I could.

Along with a lot of other people I had been waiting with bated breath for this author’s 3rd book in the Peyton’s Path series for quite some time. It’s a fabulous series and I was quite happy to wait until it was right. Whilst we were all waiting the author released this book, the first in a new series. I didn’t read it until after finally getting the Peyton’s Path book and I’m sorry I waited so long to dive into this one.

This feels like a much darker and more mature version of Peyton’s Path. It’s about Avery a young woman who is on the cusp of starting her life. She’s just taken her nursing degree finals and has heard she is going to represent her Tae Kwan Do team at Nationals with the expectation she’ll be going to the Olympics after narrowly missing out 4 years previously. Her life isn’t perfect by any means and she has spent the last year feeling very isolated from her family. Her best friend Sylvia is practically a sister though.

She is away for the weekend, with her 18-year-old brother who is on leave from military school, to spend time with her pregnant step-mother and two younger step-brothers. Her Dad is military and is currently deployed. When she's out for the day with their step-brothers everything changes.

The last few days there has been reports of a new illness that causes the victims to spread the virus by biting people. She gets a message to pick up her step-mother, stock up with masses of supplies and get to the family campground that her grandparents owned and that her father and his foster brothers now own and run, even whilst serving in the military.

This book is Avery’s story of how she and her friend and family travel in these dangerous time, the mistakes they make and the people they protect.

This is actually a reverse harem book, however, the book is more about family and courage than it is about romance. Avery has been badly burned in the past and she has plenty of work to do to change the way she looks at herself and how other people (namely men) look at her.

The plot is scarily believable, even though it’s a more sophisticated version of a zombie apocalypse novel. It covers what could happen if a violently virulent disease hit and a group of special forces who planned for everything and had the means and motive to prepare, did so. The plot was really gripping and I could barely stop reading to eat.

To be honest the half ⭐️ I deducted in the body of the review from the 5 ⭐️ awarded on ratings is because of some of the similarities between the characters of Peyton’s Path and some of the main characters in this book. Well, that and the occasionally dodgy editing.

I really hope we don’t have to wait too long for the next book in the series because the set-up has so much potential for great things!

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