Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC!

Okay, so I'm very late to finally reviewing this. It's very late; my bad.

I actually thought this was going to be more horror than it was, and I kind of wish it was a horror. The premise would make a great horror, and I'd love to see this turned into one.

The plot of this overall starts pretty well - spaceships turn up over Moscow and suck up the population before disappearing. Obviously, the world is freaked out, and everyone wonders what's going on. No one knew this would happen, but a Scottish psychologist is suddenly reminded of the client she'd seen previously. He'd given her a whole story about how he was centuries old and was created to monitor the human population for the aliens. He then tells her that they're coming and warns her. Obviously, she doesn't believe this given her work, but now suddenly she's given proof that it was all true and she wants to find him.

My main issue is that this all starts pretty tense and interesting - the set-up is great, and Rains (the strange man) is interesting. But then it doesn't really do much after this in terms of the pacing - if anything, I kind of lost interest. I didn't hate it, though the ending was a bit of a wet fish to me, but I also didn't love it. I'd love to see this author dive headfirst into the horror world, as I can see some great potential here for the future!

Ripe is based on the premise that aliens have decided humans are ripe for harvesting. They are taking people by the thousands, but that is only the beginning. We follow a psychiatrist, her patient claiming to have been alive for over 2000 years, a newspaper reporter, and more on their quest to stop the terrifying events that are unfolding globally.

Ripe was a good book, not my favorite, but good. Honestly, it just wasn't for me. I felt the plot dragged in spots and I had trouble with suspending my disbelief. However, if you are an avid lover of sci-fi, aliens, and global catastrophe, this may be the book for you! The writing was good and once the book got going, it was fairly interesting. Overall, it just didn't work for me and my interests but I feel it could be a knockout for those more immersed in the genre.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I am leaving this review voluntarily and all views expressed are my own.

Ripe is a bleak, thought-provoking book, interspersed with tense action and disquieting potential fates for mankind. It presents mind-bending ideas related to our evolution and social structures. I do feel, however, if the book had focused on the central ‘Farmers’ plot-line, rather than adding additional threats later in the story, it would have been stronger for it.

Disclaimer: I received a free e-copy of this book in return for my honest review. Thank you to James Hider, Netgalley and Black Rose Writing.

Quite a mind blowing book! With the aliens already here, humans are ripe for the picking, being used in many unpleasant ways. Well written and fast paced.