Published By: Penguin
Pages: 320
Released On: 09/01/2025
Reading Age: 12+
The world is about to end. Again.
It’s been a year since a devastating storm ripped Liz’s world apart. Haunted by the memories of those she couldn’t save, Liz holes up in the only place she felt safe before her world fell away: the bookstore where she used to work. Now she spends her days trading books for supplies and collecting stories from the remaining survivors who pass by.
Until she learns that another earth-shattering Storm is coming . . . and everything changes.
Enter Maeve, a spiky out-of-towner who breaks into the bookstore looking for shelter one night. When Maeve’s secrets and Liz’s inner demons come back to haunt them both, they find themselves fighting for their lives and asking themselves one big question.
As the end of the world approaches, is there time for one final love story?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I mean, it’s a YA book (which I love), it involves a bookstore (ditto), and it’s a dystopian type thriller (another win) – so surely there was absolutely no way I wasn’t going to enjoy it.
I was reading this as Storm Darragh was wreaking havoc across England, and the wind and rain that kept me company overnight, whilst once was calming, in tandem with reading this had become quite eery.
I agree with the reading age. It’s ideal for teenagers and young adults (any younger and I think they’d find it a bit too scary). But as an adult in her 30s, I really enjoyed it too, but I probably got different things out of it. I could understand the family aspects, the survival and whatnot, whereas younger readers may like it more for the friendships and romance and see it more as an adventure.
It is mainly set in the present time, after the storm, but it does occasionally flash back to before the storm; when there are the first rumours of the storm, what people plan to do, we meet families, and it all helps paint a vivid picture of what caused these characters to be where they are now.
This whole story is held together by one, and then two, young women. It’s a tough environment to live in at any age, even an experienced adult would struggle physically and emotionally, but these two teenage girls are just about holding it together, and the book rests on them and they work brilliantly.
It’s a mixture of dystopian, thriller, YA, romance – all with bells on. I can totally see it on the big screen.
My one negative I suppose is that some of the dialogue is a bit ropey, a bit unrealistic, but I can gloss over that considering it’s 1) aimed at younger readers, and 2) the characters are trying to stay alive and probably aren’t thinking about the readability of their sentences.
Not to get too deep about it, but it does have some interesting themes. Let’s be honest, there’s been a lot of talk of World War 3 and Armageddon, a climate crisis that dooms our planet. There always has been and always will be. But for me, it’s not the thing that will doom us. It might wipe some out, but it’s who we become afterwards that’s the problem. You may think you’d never hurt a fly, but when someone is standing in the way of your child getting enough food to survive, you’ll be surprised what you can do. And for me, that was what is so interesting about this book. It’s not so much about the storm, it’s about what the storm represents and what the storm creates, more than what it takes away.
Books By Your Bedside 