Gabrielle Fox, the main character, is unlike any other heroine I have read about. She is very vulnerable after having survived a traumatic car accident. Her career as a psychotherapist leads her to a job in a psychiatric hospital for troubled teenagers. There she meets Bethany, a 16 year old who has murdered her own mother and who also seems able to predict natural disasters. Gabrielle has the task of discovering if Bethany really can tell the future or whether she is a very talented manipulator. Even given Bethany's crime and appalling attitude, I found myself warming to her character. The fact that she comes from an Evangelical background, her father being a preacher man, is crucial to the plot. As an open-minded atheist I found the religious thread that runs through this story absolutely fascinating. I feel that whatever your thoughts on the Bible stories, this book will give you some intelligent food for thought. There is a lot of technical talk, but don't be put off by this as most of it can easily be understood by the context.
The author has included a note at the end of The Rapture in which she explains the intent behind her story. Jensen's writing is so eloquent that I was compelled to discover how the story ends, what would become of Bethany and uncover exactly how she knew of the forthcoming disasters. Along the way I felt the pain and emotional traumas that both Gabrielle and Bethany suffer. Both are fragile in their own ways and in need of love and care. This is a hard hitting topical storyline that made me sit up and listen to the message that Jensen is trying to get across. The ending blew me away and left me feeling that we really must pull together as a race and look after our planet.
To sum up, this is a captivating apocalyptic thriller set in the very near future. It's an extremely intelligent piece of work from Jensen, and she must have put in an incredible amount of hours of research to create a terrifyingly plausible storyline in The Rapture. It was a haunting read and one that I will be thinking about for a long time.
