A review by lisaluvsliterature
Wildflowers: An End of the World Romance by Kylie Scott

adventurous dark emotional funny reflective tense fast-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

So the title of this immediately made me think of the line in one of the last seasons of The Walking Dead that I watched before I gave up on the show, “Look at the flowers.” And with Kylie Scott being one of my favorite authors, and having read one other book she wrote about an apocalyptic world, I was psyched to read this one. Now, really, the title had nothing to do with my connection to TWD, but that’s okay, I really enjoyed this book and sped through this story!

While we definitely are going to have to realize a bit of Stockholm Syndrome for the romance at first in this book, Dean definitely works out to be a good guy, even if how he went about saving Astrid was a little dramatic and on the insane side. But the world outside is going away. There’s a virus that is taking out people so quickly there’s not time to prevent it. It’s not a zombie apocalypse, just the end of the world…as we know it. Sorry, couldn’t help myself! As they travel away from the city to find a safe place to set up, there is one radio station playing nothing but end of the world songs. 

As you’d expect there are the bad guys in this world. The looters, the ones who want to take over and control everyone and everything, including all the women – as violently as needed. You have the stupid people who crash cars just because they try to slow down really quickly and are probably drunk or high or something. But of course, while Dean doesn’t want to trust anyone, especially not right away, Astrid is right in that there do have to be other good people out there, I mean if they are good people, then it only stands to reason there are others. 

First they are found by a little girl, Sophie (there is a little girl named Sophia in TWD!), whose mother has passed from the disease and she is now all alone. Of course they can’t leave her. And as they walk on to the place that Astrid thinks would be a good place to build their new life, the soon find some bad people, followed by the first two people they are ready to connect with in that town. Soon they find others. People who have escaped the bad people. People that the new people know and invite to come stay.

It might be weird to say, but it was fun to follow the characters along on their shopping trips, and how they were building their new community. The relationship between Dean and Astrid was one that I enjoyed how it unfolded as well. While he did keep her prisoner until it was kind of all over with the rest of the world, once they were out, he taught her how to shoot and even gave her the choice if she wanted to leave, he wouldn’t stop her. But obviously she knew it was smarter to stay with him for the foreseeable future. Of course that meant that they got to know each other and she was able to get past the beginning. I enjoyed the banter between them and even the fun conversations between them and the other characters, including the kids, and after Sophie, we ended up with several more with each new group of people. 

This was a quick, and as I said, fun read. My only reason to not give it a full 5 stars on my blog was because I would have liked a little more of the story, it was over too soon!