It's something she never would have risked, if it weren't for a renewed glimmer of hope that her lost fiancé, Jack, may not have died during the storm as she previously believed. I truly hope Katie does not represent most Mothers who may find themselves living in an apocalyptic world. Katie ventures out in risky scouting missions for food to ensure their survival, resulting in a chance encounter with a group of survivors putting she and Harry at risk. Katie keeps them alive by foraging for food, adhering to strict decontamination procedures, and avoiding contact with the outside world as much as possible. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival.

Outside of their protected bubble, Katie and Harry encounter an altered world, full of new dangers, other survivors–both friend and foe–and many surprises. But when Katie becomes so desperate for food that she kills and roasts a rabbit right in front of him, she finally explains what death is. Bodies continue to build up around them, inescapable layers of toxic dust hang heavily in the air and Katie is only getting sicker. The note describes his destination and explains how she can get there with the resources he secreted away.I felt a lot of the going back and forth (duel timelines) from BEFORE the storm was incredibly boring and I really didn't care for what happened 5 years before the storm, between Katie and Jack.

The author clearly meant for her to be a self-sufficient, strong woman who can take care of herself, but the reader is left with totally the opposite impression.

Characters wonder whether it's safe to leave their homes and lecture each other over wearing face masks. Confined to their small flat, and only facing the hazards of the outside world to hunt and to forage for food.

Jackson combines heart-stopping adventure, with a deeply felt and vividly imagined central bond between mother and child which transcends the world around them. Even in her memory, occasionally seen in flashbacks, he’s loving and perfect, a man who can do no wrong. After years without human contact, Katie and Harry are shocked by the arrival of a threatening newcomer, just as Katie’s persistent cough seems to have taken a turn for the worse.The plot is recycled garbage and the characters are not compelling enough to be considered a “character driven” story. Michaelides seems also to be dipping into the world of Edgar Allan Poe, offering an unreliable narrator who feels more like a literary exercise. The dual timelines are fucking painful, because I cared exactly nothing about what happened to her before or how the world came to be the way that it was. And I understand the comparison I do, in as much as there is an adult and a child traveling together in a post-apocalyptic world, and I hate to hold the example written by a woman up as the shining example of the saltine cracker of fucking apocalypse stories, but here you go.