Review: Ashton Memorial by: Robert R. Best
Ashton Memorial by Robert R. Best is book two of the Memorial Trilogy. This book picks up precisely where the first book, Lakewood Memorial, ended. (Spoiler alert!) Our main character, Angie Land has just been reunited with her two children, Maylee and Dalton. The only other survivor from the initial horde of zombies that attacked the hospital is Park Welch. The parking lot of the hospital is just as infested as the inside, and there are more zombies on the way. The group has no real set plan other than Park wants to find his twin girls, Lori and Ella, and ex-wife, whom he hasn’t seen in years. Lori and Ella are stuck in the Ashton Memorial Zoo with their step-father, Gregory, who runs the zoo and has become power hungry. Lori is trapped with her crazed step-father and trying to communicate her whereabouts with her sister. Ella is stuck with the crew of zoo keepers who become “the Keepers†and she has to deal with the people who just happened to get trapped inside the zoo when they closed it off during the initial zombie attack.
Ashton Memorial lives up to all the things I loved about Lakewood Memorial, but there is just more of it. This book goes into territory that I don’t think gets explored really as often as I would like to see, what would it be like to be trapped in a zoo when the zombie apocalypse happens? This adds another level of complexity to the danger that our survivors are facing. Not only do they have to deal with zombies and people who have completely lost their minds, but now they have to worry about wild animals.
The characters are written awesomely and I am glad that we get to learn more about them and their lives prior to the end of the world. Like before, Robert Best is relentless with the pace of the story. There is hardly any respite for the characters or the reader. The violence is just as gory and detailed as it was in the first book, but in more abundance. Once again it is left with a cliffhanger ending but with a twist that left me feeling like “wait….what the hell?†Now I am very much looking forward to reading the final book in this trilogy, so I think the author attained his goal.
