Cover Image: The End of Men

The End of Men

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Member Reviews

Wasn’t sure how I’d feel reading about a pandemic so close to Covid but was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this novel. Heart wrenching in places with a lot of parallels to life post covid

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A deadly virus breaks out across the world killing only men. Here we follow multiple women and their stories during this devastating pandemic.

This book was brilliant. I couldn't stop sobbing throughout the first half. This book hit hard, especially since COVID is still fresh in everybody's minds. I went into this expecting an epic sci-fi saying a big "fuck you" to men, instead I got a genuinely emotional read that had me rethinking a lot of my ideas. As you would expect, the world doesn't suddenly become a paradise without men, it wasn't hard to feel for everyone featured in this story, all the hardships they faced during and after this disaster. These characters were multi-faceted, some of them weren't likeable but were still very human because, yes, of course some people would act that way in such a trying time.

This was just such an interesting read, the writing was great, at no point did I find it dragging with these quick switches between characters. I was engaged the entire time. I would definitely recommend this (but prepare a box of tissues in advance)

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Very interesting book to read . Having been through Covid it makes it even more interesting with it killing the majority of men . Definitely makes you think of the after affects of this type of virus . I enjoyed reading this from different peoples circumstances. I would give this 5 stars and recommend this book highly

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I'm a sucker for an apocalyptic story or anything close and End of Men nudges that's genre.
This is more story than drama. More chemistry than show and tell. And more angst than anxiety.
While the premise was interesting and grabbed me, the execution lacked a little. Perhaps it was the characters who I disliked that put me off, but something made this a slog for me.
Grab this was a winter break read with a blanket, hot drink and dreary weather.

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A distinctive set of narratives carry us through this emotive journey of humanity faced with apocalyptic like circumstances

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This book is eerily similar to the COVID pandemic, which honestly made this quite hard to read (anyone else got slight PTSD from that?).
Fab debut novel, really well written! Just a bit tough to read.

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This book is the feminist retelling of a pandemic. Each chapter is a snippet of someone's life during the Plague, an illness that only affects men. Sometimes the person only appears once - others you hear from more frequently. This book was written before Covid and the author was doing first edits during the 2020 pandemic.

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Set in the near future in 2026, Amanda is a Scottish A&E nurse who first discovers the Plague when a couple of men, who have come into the hospital, suddenly die in the same pattern. She alerted the authorities and is instantly dismissed.

The Plague spreads, from Scotland to all around the world, affecting everyone. There is a lot of grief in the book and the stories touch on domestic violence, gay and trans rights and human rights in general. You hear stories from people all over the world, (minus South Asia/Africa) and how different governments react in different ways, how the world is changed because men are now the minority.

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It is important to note that this isn't a man hating book but it does factor inequalities women face today.

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I listened to the audiobook and it was narrated by many different voices, which really added to the listening experience. I thought it was an incredible story, which could have had more depth and continued on. It left me wanting to know more.

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In the year 2025, a virus that only affects men has broken out in Scotland. The virus shortly becomes a global pandemic and, with the victims all being men, it is the women who are left to deal with the consequences.

When I chose this book, I was expecting some kind of feminist, post-apocolyptic adventure novel in which factions of women fight for survival, etc, in a similar vein to Y The Last Man. It's not. The focus is much more on the medical treatment of the virus, the development of a vaccine, the political issues caused, and the personal losses suffered by particular characters.

Once I got over the difference from what I was expecting, I enjoyed this book quite a lot. There are many similarities to Covid-19, but the virus in the book has an almost 100% death rate, so it's a lot more serious and therefore causes more drastic reactions from the characters, but the general response from governments and medical bodies is very similar, which was interesting to read because The End of Men was apparently written before the real-life pandemic hit.

My only real criticism is that, despite featuring chapters from the perspective of multiple different women from different countries, professions and social backgrounds, the narrative voice was very one-note - each character sounded almost exactly the same which made it difficult to differentiate between them.

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It would have been interesting to read this book pre-Covid and see what my thoughts were then as opposed to post-Covid.
I have seen some reviews complaining about the science of this book, but I am not concerned with that, it's fiction.
I enjoyed the story and found it interesting to emphasise in different ways with each character.

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Really enjoyed this novel, clever and dark in places! The characters were very believable and it was great to see the various dilemmas that played out.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley.

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Excellent characterisations, a story that became all too real. An emotional read that would have been less so had Covid not struck us. This will stay with me for a while.

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Thank you to Netgalley for this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I knew when I requested this book that it would have comparisons with our real life pandemic and it did have, in bucket loads. It was written very well and honestly but it was just not for me. This was not because of the author or the writing, it was just too soon for me to read this.

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This is extraordinary, not only for the obviously detailed research but for the chilling, almost spooky, uncanny foresight within.

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Great pandemic style setting hooked me and overall I enjoyed this book. The men being the victims wasn’t something I hadn’t seen yet so it felt fresh. 4 stars.

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It's well written, engaging enough, and the characters are believable. But hey, been there, seen that. In real life.

The main strength and selling point of this book is that it was written before the pandemic and it predicted so many things that is almost scary. However, its strength is also its weakness. We have all been through that story. We know how it feels like. After two years of lockdown, anxiety and loneliness, the last thing I want to do is to re-live it all over again.

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Amanda is an A&E doctor, she's called to a man with flu like symptoms who rapidly deteriorates and dies. Its a new, unknown virus, it is carried harmlessly by women but kills 90% of the men it infects. Soon men all over the world are dying. The race is on to find a vaccine or a cure before the human race is wiped out. At the same time the world begins to change, almost half the population will die. Government will be taken over by women, autocracies will collapse. the book follows several women through the years of the pandemic as they struggle for their own survival and that of the planet.

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This is an extraordinary novel and the fact it was written pre-Covid is unbelievable - though the pandemic described is more deadly, the author is correct about so much of what happened next. I actually found it a bit traumatising to read, which is a testament to the author's skill and not something I've felt with the other 'plague' novels I've read.

It's hard to describe this as enjoyable because it doesn't shy away from the horror of losing 90% of the men in the world but it's absolutely captivating and I was frequently forcing myself to turn off the light in the early hours! I think it's better on how the world adapts to and recovers from a pandemic than it is on engaging with the reality of a female-dominated society (those aspects were a little underdrawn for me) but perhaps the first is just more relatable.

Highly recommended to those with the emotional resilience to engage with this topic at length and many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

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I am SO intrigued that Christina wrote this just before Covid ripped through our lives. It's an incredibly well-written book, almost about the possible ways our pandemic could have taken (and thankfully didn't). Sometimes the jumps between so many different characters felt quite random but I understood that we were being shown the full range of the different possible effects. And actually, some of the random small characters were among my favourite storylines, like the man on the boat and his wife. A brilliant, page-turning novel that somehow taught me new things about living through a pandemic.

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The End of Men is a dystopian novel about a virus that starts killing off men. I feel like I was maybe a bit put off by the setting of the book as its actually a hospital that I work in and I was a bit picky about some of the fictional elements. I think it was weird to be reading a book about a pandemic during a pandemic which also put me off and I wasn't gripped by it.

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I'm not that keen on pandemic fiction but was intrigued by this one and ended up really enjoying it. In 2025 a flu appears which kills only men. What happens when 80% of men die, the survivors become a minority, many jobs that tend to be men-dominated are vacant, and the race for a vaccine is on? I found the fact that it goes into many years of pandemic really satisfying, as you can really follow how events are unfolding. There were many, many characters, maybe too many and I didn't necessarily feel empathy for all of them: Catherine appears throughout the book and is grieving her husband... But her husband sounds awful and I'm not sure that was intended.
The novel overall was enjoyable and although it deals with a pandemic I didn't find it too much of a reminder of Covid, it felt too apocalyptic and too different for that which was a relief.

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