Not Alone

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I wrote a much longer review but in doing so I chewed the material and realized there are plenty of issues. With pollution a major concern, this made the story feel more believable and made it more of an uneasy read. I think it could have delivered a much more compelling and chilling story if Harry had some sort of survival instinct from the beginning. They meet people both good and bad, but mostly the sadness comes from being inside the head of this traumatized woman who must keep going for the sake of her child.

Or that she would not teach her child anything about how to survive in the new world apart from mask wearing and hand washing. So she goes off and drags her kid through all these dangers and hazards where she might die and leave him alone at any time.How an ecological disaster might look, how much we take for granted, and how continuing to damage the world we live in could lead to an unthinkable future. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. In a world very close to our own, a mother and her young son desperately fend for themselves in the confinement of their one bedroom flat.

But when Katie finds a note that suggests her lost fiancé, Jack, is still alive, the two set out on a dangerous journey north in hopes of finding him. The infrastructure is collapsing, the signs are rotted, and of course Katie has to use an old map rather than GPS. The flashbacks to the apocalyptic storm came too late to create the tension I wanted to see, and I struggled to connect to the mother/child relationship (which had been one of the selling points).I found it well written and I flew through it; even though relatively little happens except for the mundane rituals of Katie's and Harry's survival, there are real moments of heart-in-your-throat-action amid some of the more repetitive parts (this is mostly in the dust itself and the mask wearing, which gets repeated over and over). But the amount of whining leads the reader to think of spoiled children, and how can a child be spoiled in a post apocalyptic world? This book is def not for everyone and I gotta say (even though it sounds bad) Harry was not my favorite character. I enjoyed the parts where other characters entered, as this seemed to push the story forward and provide something different within the narrative.

After having a few scares and finding an old note from Jack, she realizes he could still be alive and out there somewhere. I wanted to know more about the microplastic storm, have it connect more firmly with what we're currently experiencing.When they encounter bodies in cars and in buildings where they scavenge, she tells Harry they’re sleeping.

Towards the end, I was feeling an impatience to reach their final destination and find out if Katie’s fiancé was alive after all, but once I reached the end, it all felt worth it. Since giving birth alone in her barricaded flat, gradually giving up hope for Jack, Katie lives solely for Harry. Difficult decisions are made throughout the book, and protection at all cost is the main goal for survival with these two and the cast of characters met along the way.

Once I figured out like 1/3 of the way through the books what Katie’s fate would be, it was hard because then nothing else seemed to matter as much. Woman and son go on road trip across post apocalyptic landscape filled with nothingness, and are arguably too stupid to have survived the first fifty fucking miles, nevermind the remaining 300. They are constantly on the brink of starvation and so much of humanity has died that Western civilization has largely collapsed. Many of the survivors she meets along the way are menacing, and she struggles to trust even those who deserve it, like Andy and Sue, an older couple who have taken up together after losing their families in the storm. In the present, Katie worries about plastic dust particles, toxic rainstorms, and encountering other people who might have survived.