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wardenred's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Sometimes kindness made the difference between a day you could get through okay and a day that ground you into the dirt.
This is one of the most hopeful, optimistic, inspiring books I've read lately, which is hard to fathom because it's a post-apocalyptic story that deals so heavily with PTSD and living after huge losses. But I guess it just goes to show: it's all in how you handle the subject. This is a story about people in pain who gradually find healing, and it's so beautifully focused on community and connections. While it's a character-centric book first and foremost, I've got to say I got really invested in the post-war, post-apocalyptic setting, all the intricacies of the society inhabiting it, all the ways it has fucked the characters up in the past and all the opportunities it provided for them to get better. There's the kind of complete unity between setting, plot, and characters here that I absolutely dig.
I very much enjoyed how the polyamory was handled, and all the different connections formed in the community: friendships, friendships with benefits, romance, an intense emotional connection with a sexual component that wasn't in fact romantic, allyships, familiar relations. All of these different relationships felt so real and so completely human. I also loved how trauma was handled, and how clearly it was shown that interacting with the world through the lens of your trauma will lead to fuck-ups, and it's completely understandable, but it's not an excuse.
I came for the romance, but I honestly stayed for the entire cast and all those connections. It was beautiful to witness the story of such a diverse community made up of flawed yet genuinely kind people striving to do good by themselves, each other, and the broken world they inherited. Absolutely every relationship/interaction held my complete interest. Like, I would never expect myself to be so fully invested in the plot thread about the romantic lead sorting out things with his ex who wants them to get back together when things between the two LIs are shaky, and yet here I am.
I also randomly want to note the way Clark's chronic pain is handled, all those ways, big and small, in which it impacts various areas of life, and how at the same time that pain never defined him, outside of the moments when he semi-consciously chose to define himself by his disability. This was awesomely written and so, so relatable. Also, I love Hadas and her dog. And all those times I wanted to give Van a hug and a shake at the same time? Good times. Plenty of feels.
There was a tiny bit of rockiness here, too, like a bunch of scenes feeling kinda... summarized and stilted, and the two POVs/plotlines not always intersecting in the smoothest of ways. But honestly, these flaws were super easy to overlook in favor of all the beauty and kindness this story provides in spades.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Gun violence, Alcohol, Grief, Medical content, Mental illness, and Drug use
Moderate: War and Death
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