Review: Over the Rainbow by Brian Rowe (Over the Rainbow Book Tour)

Zippy Green never meant to fall in love with a girl, but when she does, her ultra-conservative father tries to send her to anti-gay camp. At the Kansas City airport, however, she hides inside a giant suitcase and sneaks onto an airplane headed not to the camp, but to Seattle, where her online love Mira lives. Halfway through the flight, the plane barrels out of control and crashes into the ground, knocking her unconscious.

When Zippy awakens, she finds that most of the passengers have vanished. She doesn’t know what’s happened, but she’s determined to find out. She begins a quest on foot toward Seattle, and along the way, she meets a teenager with a concussion, a homeless man with a heart condition, a child without a shred of bravery, and a terrier named Judy. Together the group discovers that more than two-thirds of the world's population have mysteriously disappeared. But that's only the beginning...

All Zippy wants is to find her Mira, but before she can she has to contend with two outside forces. The first is her homophobic father, who does everything in his power to keep her from the girl she loves. And the second is extinct creatures of all shapes and sizes, including living, breathing dinosaurs, which have replaced the missing population.

This book really took me by surprise, I was expecting something kind of... out there, but Over the Rainbow totally took me by surprise. It took some time to get into the book and I had to force myself through the first maybe twenty percent of the book, but by the end I was totally gripped and the ending left me with an ear to ear smile on my face, which showed just how much I started to care for every single one of the characters, including the adorable dog Judy.

Despite the fact that the relationship between Zippy and Mira is kind of a big deal in the book, Rowe doesn't try to make it a thing. He doesn't use the LGBT theme to try and force a message onto the readers, only using Zippy's father to put across his disapproval and then change his mind, which was fantastic. The 1990 setting was also absolutely awesome, back to the days of awful dial-up connection and snail mail email!

That being said, there was one massive thing that really annoyed me, and that's the dinosaurs. Okay, dinosaurs are cool, like every kid has a dinosaur phase.... I'm not even a kid and I'm still in my dinosaur phase. That being said, after my paleontology module in my first year of university I have a massive thing about dinosaurs being portrayed properly in the media... you know, justice for the Jurassic and all that. I get that this book is fantasy and an acid trip in itself, but the sometimes unrealistic depictions of dinosaurs in this book just kind of drove me mad.

Overall, Over the Rainbow was a very surreal book which took a lot of things on and, for the most part, delivered. I did dislike the dinosaur depictions though.

Book released  3rd September 2013 by Strange Chemistry

Book received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review (NetGalley)

Reviews for other books by this author:

Happy Birthday To Me (Birthday #1)
Happy Birthday To Me Again (Birthday #2)
Happy Birthday To You (Birthday #3)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Brian Rowe is a writing fiend, book devotee, film fanatic, and constant dreamer. He's written nine novels, dozens of short stories, five feature-length screenplays, and hundreds of film articles and essays. He is one half of the blog Story Carnivores, where he reviews the latest in books and film. He is currently pursuing his MA in English at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is hard at work on his next novel.