Pina Coladas and Rats – Angel Ramon

2/5 stars

Pina Coladas and Rats has a really interesting storyline. Otilia and her husband have just moved to Puerto Rico, but all is not as it seems in Salinas as killer rats have started to take over. The whole book is Otilia’s journey to survive and the people she meets along the way.

Unfortunately, the writing was clunky. I know some Spanish so I could get by with the bits of Spanish dialogue, but the translations of them right after bogged the writing down. The random political and religious dialogue toward the middle of the book was really awkward. It came out of left field and, while a very cool mechanic, didn’t fit much with what was already happening. I needed some lead up to integrate those concepts better into the story.

I don’t feel like I got to know the characters as much as I’d have liked to. I wanted them to survive because they were who I’d been reading about, but I didn’t care much about them beyond that. They didn’t feel a whole lot like true main characters to me; more like main characters by convenience. I wish they would’ve grown a bit more over the book, especially with the sparks of a relationship forming between Otilia and Jack. This book presumably happened in one day, but the passage of time when it comes to weather/natural occurrences and relationships developing seemed extremely skewed.

While I had my problems with the execution of Pina Coladas and Rats, I’d be willing to give this series another go and see how the second book fares. It is a fun concept, and I’d like to see where this storyline goes from here.