I'm about 1/3 of the way into it and nothing is happening. An unreasonable amount of time has been devoted to the present state of mind of a teenage girl whose friend disappeared, and now we're hearing way too much about the present state of mind of her brother who is off to college.

Is anything going to HAPPEN?

So far it's really boring and I'm just about ready to bail.

A real story would have made this better. Unfortunately I stayed with it hoping something would happen. Heard an NPR interview with the author as the HBO series was going to launch. As one reviewer said, HBO has a pretty low bar to hit.

It was a great idea executed through the mundane, lame personalities of the characters. As a result, there was no overriding communication, no big realization. No real tension. it's like a PBS show about growing old: you don't get nicer or meaner as you get older, you just get more of what you were before. These characters were lame before the "event" and they remain lame after. I actually tried to get through the final two hours by putting in an earbud and "listening" in the background. Now I wish I had quite.

He did very well with poor material.

Very hard to choose. I didn't feel connected to any of them.

No one sets out to make a bad movie or write a bad piece. This was just not for me. I like my fiction with a purpose. In graduate school, talking about "the narrative turn" one noted professor said, "We look for change in the writer from beginning to end." These characters did not change. As a result, we shared their mundaneness in an extraordinary time.

This just wasn't for me. I was hoping for a fresh take on the Rapture and not a heavy-handed religious brow-beating. It's not that. It's a fresh take on the Rapture from the perspectives of those who live through it. But here's the thing, if you remove the Rapture plot, and put in a shooting, or a flood, or a tornado, it's the same thing. The Rapture isn't the point. Loss is. We've all lost things. Our favorite toy, a loved one, a boyfriend/girlfriend. We've all had to cope with that loss. And that coping isn't entertaining. It's necessary, but it isn't fun to live through. Now if I told you a room full of strangers you just met (not spoken to, just viewed through one-way glass) had all just experienced loss and that it was your job to watch them deal with it and write it all down, then you would have this book. It's a "day in the life" of people who lost something and can't figure out why and need to cope with it as best they can with limited tools. If you are a fan of reality television shows like Intervention and Hoarders, then this might be what you want. If you are looking for escapism, a thought-provoking take on a religious calamity, or to be entertained, I couldn't recommend this book less.

Yes! There were a lot of characters and story lines and at times it was difficult to keep them all in line.

Oddly enough, I liked all the storylines and the way they all were linked together.

There were a lot of good scenes

It did neither but it did make me think what I would be like if this scenario happened to me.

It was a good book and I would recommend it to others.

I loved the deceptive simplicity of the story. So simple and so layered and complex at the same time. Great narration, kept the rhythm and cadence of the superb writing.

Very good story. Great concept.

I really enjoyed the whole thing but I deducted one star because I found the ending lacking

yes

did not have a favorite

first time

neither

I liked the book. It kept my attention until the end when I felt as though the author had gotten tired of writing and just ended, kind of taking the easy way out. The ending left me feeling like a leftover.

Great story. I inadvertently read Left Behind before I realized who wrote it and that they were serious. I like this much better and I love this narrator.

I was very interested in why all those people
disappeared and this question was never answered. It focused on loss and was dark
and depressing. The narrator did a great job.

To enjoy this book you have to either not have watched the TV series, or have the mental ability to detach yourself from the TV series and not compare the two...
The small screen adaptation was great by all measures, but the novel has hidden depths that I enjoyed. The narration was flawless.