Not Alone

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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). 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. I wanted her to succeed, to make it, the same way I want that for me, the same way I want that for my friends, and there aren’t a whole lot of books or media that have pulled that feeling out of me.

I possibly could have tolerated all this as a perfectly mediocre three star read if it hadn’t been so long, but the fact that it just dragged on and on and on, holy fuck. She is clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress, both from the storm and from the assault, and their isolation has only made things worse. Five years ago, a microplastics storm ravaged the globe, decimating most of the the population and leaving the few survivors sick and struggling in a toxic post-apocalyptic world -- where the simple act of breathing outside air could mean death.Katie is a weak little woman who can't even bear to think about the past in any way and spends half the time mooning over her lost fiancee that she needs more than life itself, apparently. As someone with clinical depression, many scenes and themes hit so close to home that I had to stop listening and switch to music. Katie is a "mama bear" in the most extreme circumstances imaginable, with her fierce love for Harry and desire to protect him motivating every risky, impossible choice she has to make.

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. This felt so very claustrophobic, and while I can’t say I had a ‘good’ time with this, I did find it a powerful read. She's creepily jealous and possessive of her son when an older grandmotherly woman offers to watch him for her and tries to prevent anyone from telling her kid anything about the world.Katie is pained by her choices, and the shortcomings of the world she is raising her child in, and we can feel that emotion in the novel.