Please note that this book is not for me - I have read the book, However I had to DNF and because i do not like to give negative reviews I will not review this book fully - there is no specific reason for not liking this book. I found it a struggle to read and did not enjoy trying to force myself to read this book.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused and thank you for the opportunity to read this book

The set up was a perfect dystopian horror but I just couldn't get into it. I found it quite difficult to keep track of the characters and it just didn't hold my interest.

I have seen so many amazing reviews for this one that I just had to pick it up and read it and I wasn't disappointed.

This is my 2nd book in a month by this author and I really enjoyed both.

A great story that kept me wanting to read and delve into the post apocalyptic world as humanity fights to survive.

A solid dystopian read but nothing too interesting or compelling. The writing was good, but the plot was simply average.

The Boy on the Bridge is tagged as The Girl with all the Gifts book 2 but it is not that, it is a brilliant companion novel set in the same world, you can read this perfectly easily as a standalone book

I was initially interested in reading this book, however my tastes have shifted and I do not think I will be able to get to it now. Many thanks to the publisher for sending me a digital copy!

In a land of terror there was a very clever boy. The people thought he could save them and they let him out into the world, where the monsters lived.

I liked this book, although as the prequel you would think it is a great place to start but I think I may have to read The Girl with all the Gift’s to fully understand this book.

This is a great dystopian horror book, as the prequel follow up book I wasnt sure what to expect - personally I think it probably helps to have read the first book ( or have watched the film) but its not essential. Carey takes us back into a world which feels eerily familiar and almost like a warning then fiction

A prequel to ‘The Girl With All The Gifts’, this does a great job of reintroducing us to a complex dystopian world where the monsters may not be as ‘monstrous as first thought.

The pacing for this is just as good as the previous novel, and builds to a satisfying conclusion. The author does a good job at concluding some loose plot threads from the previous novel while still managing to weave a suspenseful story. From a world that is well established in The Girl With All The Gifts’ I think it was a smart move to do a prequel rather than rehash a story that was so well concluded as it allowed for a greater degree of freedom for the author to introduce new concepts and characters without interfering with the original story.

The new characters are just as morally ambiguous as the previous instalment. Although not a new concept in horror/dystopian fiction (I Am Legend is clearly used as an inspirational jumping board here) I like this idea that creatures plaguing the earth may not necessarily be the bad guys. They understand the concept of love and family, and this complex relationship between human and monster is intriguing and rich in thought provoking storytelling. However, I did find a lot of them rather similar and indistinguishable, and sometimes I craved the company of Melanie from TGWATG.

I enjoyed this, and would certainly recommend if to fans of dystopian horror who enjoy complex characters.

I think you maybe need to read the previous book first as I felt like I’d missed out on certain things, and that they’d of made more sense, although I enjoyed the book all the same and it was a good read, a different read to my usual but I quite liked it and am off to read the first one!

The Boy on the Bridge is a prequel which explains much of the backstory featured in The Girl With All The Gifts. Some plot holes are successfully closed; other plots raise questions and contradict the information given in the first book. That said, this book is a fascinating look at the Cordycepts virus (which is real, by the way- Google wasp parasites if you dare...) and its impact on the world's remaining human population. The idea of a new species emerging which is neither human or shuffling zombie is intriguing. Some scenes did read a bit too much like Dancing with Wolves, Avatar and Pocahontas, where the 'civilised' people are shocked to learn that their rivals also understand concepts like family and honour. I wasn't sure whether a person on the autism spectrum would be impressed or offended by the fact that the character with ASD identified more with the 'monsters' than his militarised counterparts. He certainly managed to survive longer than the rest of his team! Once again the character with ASD is portrayed as a "savant" who is only useful to the team because of his computer-like brain. Once again I find myself asking why disabled characters have to act like superheroes before they are considered worthy of inclusion, when everybody else gets to drink, have sex, argue and generally behave like flawed and complex human beings.
I violently disliked the extreme prejudice amongst the team. With so few humans left, why would anybody try to antagonise their colleagues? Why are old stereotypes like 'pregnant women are crazy' and 'people who lack social skills are r*tards' still prevalent when everyone who has survived thus far has at least proved themselves capable of staying out of trouble? I did enjoy the fact that almost all of the military characters were shown to be trigger-happy, authoritarian and self-aggrandising. If they'd let the science experts remain in charge they might all have survived.

This is a prequel to The girl with all the gifts and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. I do not normally pick the zombie genre, but am a big fan of dystopian fiction. Of all theories for zombies the one of the aggressive fungus is the most logical one to accept and the author has managed to weave a compelling tale of survival and research. The character are interesting and the main character, a scientist who despite the rules gets pregnant during the main research expedition, is inspiring. The boy who she cares for and who is part of the expedition is a gifted scientist who suffers from a condition similar to Aspergers. They are two of the 12 members of the crew, the rest of which consists of scientists and soldiers in equal measure. The crew is thus split evenly into two rival camps suspicious of each other yet forced to collaborate. In this uneasy setting their expedition takes the research team as far as Scotland, where they discover a new form of being, ostensibly human or part-human. In the process of discovery a series of unfortunate events leads to a series of casualties and events that culminate in a hasty escape and the wrapping up of the expedition. Its timing, however, is unfortunate. The political developments at the base force the remaining members of the crew to make decisions and take sides for what they believe in.

Overall this was unexpectedly and most unusually even more interesting than the first novel. Carey captures interesting personalities in a unique setting and weaves his tale with a dexterity that keeps the reader in thrall until the very last page. In a world about to lose the last shreds of humanity he convincingly holds up a mirror to ourselves and shows us that the other foes not always have to be bad and that by going on the defensive and anticipating the worst we ourselves perpetrate the very violence we are afraid of. I thoroughly enjoyed this and hope there will be more to come.

I really enjoyed The Girl With All the Gifts but I think I enjoyed this prequel or companion novel even more.

All the characters are extremely well developed but for me it is Stephen in particular who makes this book so special. He is a socially awkward boy genius who at aged 13 made a fantastic scientific discovery that gave the remainder of the human race a slightly better chance of survival following the Breakdown, when most people became bloodthirsty 'Hungries'. Now aged 15 Stephen finds himself on a team of military and science experts, sent out to recover the work of a previous failed expedition and hopefully find a proper cure for the plague.

A wonderful book with an ending that will delight anyone who has already read The Girl With all the Gifts.

It took me awhile to work it out but Boy on the Bridge is set some years before Girl With All the Gifts. In the earlier book we meet children who are similar to the zombie-like beings roaming the countryside, the Hungries. But unlike the adult Hungries these children retain many of their human qualities - the giveaway that we are reading about a few years earlier in this book is the fact that for much of the time the main characters only know of the standard sort of mindless Hungry. They are a mixed group of scientists and military protection who are following a previous expedition which left samples from various zombies. They are searching for any variation in soil type, climate, elevation or other environmental factors but find nothing until they reach Scotland. There are an interesting blend of characters - the military side includes a commanding officer who has been sent out as a political move as well as a variety of junior soldiers. The point is made that, after an apocalyptic event, there are limited career options - mechanics, technicians and anyone who can hold a gun will all end up in the army. The scientists are a similar group, although their weak link is their nominal leader who spends most of his time hiding away. The two members of the team we see most of are Samrina Khan, an epidemiologist, and Stephen, a 15-year-old boy who appears to be autistic but is also brilliant. He, in fact, came up with the idea for the gel everyone uses when outside which blocks the scents which attract the Hungries attention. They are also the two team members who have secrets to hide - Dr Khan has become pregnant, which was always going to be a problem on a year-long mission, and Stephen is sneaking out to study the Hungries at much closer quarters than is usually safe.

This is a sort of zombie novel but also one which looks at how people react to stressful circumstances. It is vaguely pleasing to see women in leadership positions but the reaction of the team to Stephen is sadly realistic - he is treated by most of the group as a liability, they feel he is just a child and that his autism makes him a danger to himself and others. I was fascinated by Stephen's narration of events as he saw them too - he is pretty aware of how others see him but is absolutely certain of the validity of the work he is doing. When this work brings him face to face with a group of children who are living among the Hungries he realises they have found the anomaly they were searching for.

A brilliant prequel to the first book, I loved how we got to be more involved in the world that it's set, and I really loved the depth of each character!

I was unaware I was missing the world of The Girl With All the Gifts until this book came along. Following a years-long mission across the UK to collect specimen samples that may provide vital answers for the survivors of the breakdown, Carey presents us with a range of complex characters, whose sometimes selfish and contradictory motivations clash in the claustrophobic confines of their transportation. But even in their isolated conditions the team are victims of the political machinations back at their base in Beacon which has a profound effect on their mission status and tests loyalties to their limit.

I found the moral catch-22 situation Greaves finds himself in particularly powerful and thought-provoking: by withholding his discovery into a potential cure he is condemning Dr Khan to her fate, having been bitten, but by sharing the cure he is sentencing future 2nd-gen hungries to a persecuted witch hunt and life as living test subjects at whim of (original) humanity's desperate need to survive. It brings interesting questions as to what it means to be human in a world that can no longer sustain human life as we know it..

I adored the original and was admittedly (pleasantly) surprised to find this prequel surpassed my expectations! Truly unputdownable. I personally enjoy the origin stories more than the action driven plots, so exploring the "how" and the "why" of this world was fascinating.

Very well written prequel that gives the background into the what and the why. The characters are very well developed and even if you don't warm to all of them you can sympathise with the position they find themselves in. Good ending with a twist that closes the circle from the first book.

I didn't enjoy this book as much as The Girl With All The Gifts but it was still a well written story. It was very descriptive which meant that I struggled to keep track of some of the characters at points during the story. Overall though, a good read.

I received a copy of this book from NetGallley, in exchange for an honest review.

Bleak, action packed engrossing slant on the zombie genre.

A team of scientists and military protection are sent out from Beacon, the last settlement in England uninfected by the cordyceps fungus that’s turned humanity into zombies, called hungries. In an armored vehicle called Rosie, their mission is to collect samples and data that will help them cure or at least innoculate the remaining humans against the fungus, but that mission isn’t going well. And in the meantime, they discover a whole new type of hungry: children who are infected but can still function somewhat as humans.
This is a great prequel,sidequel and I guess, eventual sequel to The Girl With All
The Gifts.
Characters really drive this story, it’s the novel’s great strength and what great characters they are too.
The pick of these being Greaves an autistic 15 year old who may just hold the key to saving humanity. The perfect complimenting character is career soldier, McQueen, a hybrid of Avatar’s Colonel Quaritch and Blain from predator. He’s quite ridiculous and macho, the perfect antidote to Greaves stoic ‘robot.’
My only gripe with the characters is that there are so many of them and it became a little hard to keep up with them all.
I found the pacing of the first half quite slow but this was ramped up in the second half when we get more interaction with the ‘hungries’ and the action is increased and the plot begins to unravel.
I really enjoyed this novel. It had a bit of everything. Bleak, heartbreaking, horrifying at times but also tinged with love, sacrifice and ultimately, hope. I was disappointed with the epilogue. I’m not sure it was necessary. It was heavy handed and seemed a little ‘forced’ to provide a link with The girl With All The Gifts.
I did enjoy this novel and the slant on the zombie genre. Was it as good as The Girl With All The Gifts? I’d put it on a par.