What in the hell is happening???!!!! Is the universe conspiring against me??? I have been an avid reader my entire life, have read horror, my fave genre, since I was about 12. I am typically an easy to please reader, I find reading so enjoyable that I'm not overly picky, or incredibly put off by books that aren't exactly great or characters not so likable. Up until now, I would dislike a book strongly enough to leave a negative review maybe a few times a year. Here lately, however, I can't seem to find a decent book. I don't know.....maybe I've been incredibly fortunate in the past with my reading choices.....maybe all of the bad books I avoided have found me. Anyway, I digress.....

I have been reading alot more out of my genre recently, a mostly bad experience, so I decided to play it safe with this one. An apocalyptic horror with giant spiders, written by Pinborough...right up my alley, this has to be good right??? A loud resounding WRONG!!!

The main protagonist , Matt, is unbelievably unlikable....obtuse, annoying, entitled, cringey as all get out. The book starts with Matt and his wife Chloe. Throughout the beginning chapters of this book Matt gushes dramatically about his love for Chloe....2 days after she, and his unborn child, die, he is sleeping with another woman. A week after she dies, he's with another, whom he gets pregnant...because it makes so much sense to get another woman pregnant right now, when they are giving birth to spiders and dying. His character is nauseating.

The world is ending and all Matt can think about is sex. Thats ok though....Pinborough explains this ...she harps on " red blooded males" and " men being men" repeatedly. Gag.

He is also incredibly entitled and stupid. He takes whatever he wants, makes decisions for everyone and has zero real world skills or knowledge. He freezes at every dangerous event, needing be saved by others, but he is still written as the good guy, the leader. I have rarely felt such strong dislike for a character...this fictional character literally pissed me off.

The others aren't much better. Everyone in this book is unbelievability ignorant with zero survival skills. The best of the lot is the oldest man. They immediately take in 2 wemon and a young girl, no questions asked....like why aren't you carrying spider children like ALL of the female population worldwide?? Simply because they are attractive....yes, the only known female survivors just happen to both be gorgeous and sexy....enter dramatic eyeroll. I find it almost unbelievable that a woman wrote this garbage.

The only character with any useful and practical input ....the women should not be immediately taken in and trusted, they shouldn't be calling out for other survivors, making noise, etc......was ostracized, painted the jerk and ended up the bad guy in the end.

The plot itself had potential, but was never fulfilled. Too many plot holes and literally zero answers about anything. I certainly hope the sequel is better :( ( )

Okay, let's just get this out of the way up front: this was the worst book I have read in a long time, which was really disappointing since I like Pinborough's The Hidden. Really bad.

There are so many problems with this it's hard to know where to start and it isn't worth your or my time to go into it in depth. I guess to get started it is a post-apocalyptic novel. The women have mostly turned into giant "widow" spiders (how anyone knows this is beyond me). The science behind this is so ludicrous and preachy it would have better been left out entirely.

Onward to the more serious issues. First, written in a language that would make a sixth grader cringe. Second, so many plot holes you just cannot suspend your disbelief that much. Third, two dimensional idiotic characters. A grade-schooler could figure out how to survive better than these fools. A main character that throws off his first pregnant girlfriend, then his post-apoc. girlfriend, then shacks with a deaf woman and knocks her up with as little grief and feeling as a mole. Let me make it clear, these women all die a terrible death within six months. His grief lasts about a week each time, and this is supposed to be the main sympathetic character. And on and on...

This is the sort of shabby book that smells of fulfilling a book contract. I know authors get screwed, but then they screw us without warning. I have seen authors disown a book like this, written to fulfill a contract, but they usually warn potential readers. The shame of it is there is no reason for Pinborough to write a book this bad. I've read her stories and one other novel and this almost smells like a bad case of writer's block. ( )

The Breeding Ground is an absolutely chilling horror novel. It starts off innocuously enough with Matt and Chloe, a happy couple, who are going to have a baby. Things start getting bad in a hurry when Chloe develops a nasty streak that is completely unlike her personality. On top of that, she begins to develop strange lumps on her body. This isn't only happening to Chloe, but is happening to many women. Matt comes to the realization that it's not a baby who is growing inside of Chloe. These bizarre spider-like creatures began to hatch from the women in Matt's English town. The spiders take to the street and devour their prey. Matt realizes that Chloe is lost to him and flees for his life. Matt finds other survivors, and they eventually get to a military compound.

It's not often that I find a novel with such excellent horror elements such as this one. Also, the post-apocalyptic nature of the novel has rarely been handled so well. Sarah Pinborough nails it with flare and talent. It's hard not to feel bad for her protagonist Matt, an ordinary guy thrust into a very difficult scenario. The plot is intelligent and well thought out. The writing is at a very high level that as a fellow author I can respect and admire. The novel leaves itself open for a sequel, one that I look forward to reading.

Carl Alves - author of Blood Street ( )

Matt and Chloe live in a small town in the English countryside. It is there where they lived and loved, and prepared to bring a new life into the world. However, Chloe starts changing – and it isn’t regular pregnancy changes. When Matt realizes that Chloe is not the only woman acting strange he starts to worry, but even his girlfriends altered behavior and appearance doesn’t prepare him for what comes next. In one sentence, spider-like parasites that use human women to breed and any human to feed on.

I have mentioned here before that every now and again I like to read a good horror novel, the kind that keeps me awake all night because it was just so creepy. When I found a copy of this book tucked away in the horror section of a local used book store that’s what I was hoping for. However, I must say that it didn’t really live up to the scariness I was looking for. That being said, it wasn’t a bad book.

Breeding Ground, while not being really scary, still had a couple creepy and uncomfortable moments. If I had to compare this book to something, I would say it is much more The Faculty ‘figure out what’s going on as you stumble around freaked out’ and far less Rob Zombie’s Halloween ‘mind fuck’ (excuse my language).

The characters we’re a mixed bag. The main character Matt is easy to like, but some of the other characters were a downright pain to put up with. In all honesty, I was glad to see some of them go. There is a lot of conflict between some of the characters, while the rest just want to band together and find a way to survive. Needless to say, there is never a dull moment between the players.

As for the book as a whole, once it starts moving, it moves and is really easy to read. I say this having read the book in just a few hours. I kept reading because I wanted to know what the characters were going to have to face next and what they were going to learn. Pinborough was rather creative in finding ways to raise the shock factor, gruesome as they may have been, and also finding things that would benefit the characters in their quest to survive amongst this new species.

I recommend this book if you’re looking for something to read that’s on the creepy side, though I warn anyone who is quick to cringe to brace yourself for some of the more grisly parts. Personally, I will be keeping an eye out for some of her other works as well as the follow up to this book, Feeding Ground. ( )

Once again Sarah Pinborough delivers a very readable and entertaining book. This time she tackles a post-apocalyptic storyline following a band of survivors as they try and navigate their new world where creatures spawned by the female population are taking over. The only complaint I might have is that the story seemed to be bigger than the one delivered. There were many characters introduced as the survivor's numbers increased and I found myself forgetting who was who. There also seemed to be more going on with the creatures that didn't make the final cut of the book. I'll make a guess that some formula of 300 to 350 pages are required for a genre paperback, and therefore something needed to be edited out. I did, however, enjoy the book very much. The quality of the writing is good. I haven't read a Sarah Pinborough book I haven't enjoyed yet and am looking forward to reading more of her. ( )