Books with title THIS WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN

A sleepover on Friday night, best friends forever, popcorn and a good movie. What could go wrong? Rylee and Gray Flanders; Carsen and Cody Holloway, over at the Flanders' house expecting the usual Friday night fun. Joe Flanders is a local plastic surgeon, and his wife, Cyndi, is a former beauty queen. Cyndi is popping the corn when it happens. The flash. The fear. The shock. The bowel-shaking noise. Both sets of twins are 16 and now have to wonder if they will survive to 17. Making it across the street to the Holloway house where Gray and Carsen explain there is a room full of emergency supplies is the first challenge. After that, survival. Who knows how? Who even thought of this stuff? This wasn't supposed to happen.The Water Cave, Book 1 of This Wasn't Supposed to Happen, takes us on a journey of both survival and loss as two families and a small group of passers-by face the unthinkable together, sheltered from the nuclear horror until the day they can step outside and face the uncertain future.

Death, new life, healing and madness. The flash has come and gone, but memories linger. Memories but not, thankfully, radiation. The Holloway house provides sanctuary and the people huddling there grow closer together. They are sheltered in a neighborhood where other houses provided inadequate protection and death crept in with the fallout. New survivors join them and others leave: some temporarily and some forever. They all face the uncertain future with very little idea of what happened, and even less about how to go about living their lives in this different and dangerous world. Some wonder if it is worth the effort. But they emerge from the water cave and come Into The Light in Part II of Jennifer Hilary’s top-100 novel, This Wasn't Supposed to Happen.

It wasn't supposed to happen, but it did. The flash, the noise, the silent death, and hard-won survival. The Flanders twins cope with their loss — the rest of the group look at Dr. Flanders and wonder, but they keep their thoughts to themselves. More survivors join the group, joyful reunions give everyone hope. The threat outside their little survival bubble gets closer and more real; plans are made, preparations begun. But is it too little, too late?

More survivors trickle out of the neighborhood, but the emptiness left by the fallen affects everyone in different ways. Gray and Carsen look past the dreary present and find, for a while, their own hope. Gentle souls are pushed into violence and security takes precedence over other worries. But shared resources and a daily meal start to build up a community, a very changed community, but one with potential for cooperation and fellowship. Family members come home and with the joy of reunion there is the pain of loss and the agony of betrayal. Some robed people from the woods share a meal, and Ms. Cherisse ponders their appearance. All in all, another exciting whistle stop on the train that is the apocalypse.

Approaching the end of the first year of the After Times, priorities turn upside down as the Information Age fades away. Some of the survivors wonder why they have survived and whether the lost are the most fortunate. Births follow deaths, joy lives in tension with sorrow. The reality that life has forever been changed begins to sink in. They will each receive answers and we are granted a glimpse into their futures before we leave them.