Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC copy of this novel in return for my honest review.

I approached 'The End of Men' with rather a lot of trepidation. I know that there will inevitably be a deluge of literature about the current Covid-19 pandemic, but I'm looking forward to reading it retrospectively, once we're no-longer in lockdown: when I'm no-longer worrying about what I'm allowed to do, how to keep loved ones safe and, for goodness sake, I'm allowed to leave the house for more than three government-sanctioned reasons. It seems too soon to start reading plague literature and I was really concerned that this book may trigger all of my current anxieties. Strangely, the reverse happened.

If this book had been published in 2019, I would have categorised it as dystopia, possibly even feminist. In 2021 however, it reads as a fictional, exaggerated account of recent history, a point that has not gone unnoticed by the author.

This is not, however, about Covid. In fact it was written just before the current pandemic. 'The Plague' is a readily-spread virus which sweeps through the world at an alarming rate, carried by men and women, young and old. Within hours of the first deaths, a doctor recognises that it is killing its male hosts within days of them contracting it, but only men. And so whilst many things are alarmingly similar to our current situation, so many other things are much, much worse. In a way, my reading of this book has actually settled my nerves as the news no-longer seems quite as extreme.

Outside of the times within which it is being published, this would always have been a great read, and it's one of the best things I've read in ages. The multiple-character perspective sheds light on how a pandemic affects journalists, doctors, scientists, politicians, married and unmarried women, and even one man. It questions how society is constructed, and challenges the role of women within society, without being overtly feminist in its tone, and this is refreshing.

It's a fast-paced, well-characterised and well-plotted science-fiction thriller. I can see it being enormously popular, and 'The End of Men' would sit comfortably next to novels such as 'The Handmaid's Tale', 'Never Let You Go' and 'Nineteen-Eighty-Four'. A fabulous read!

I received a copy of the book from Netgalley to review. Thank you for the opportunity.
An interesting and thought provoking story, that rings all to true today. The writing is good and there is plenty of suspenseful buildup for the action that explodes on the pages.
The characters are not very likable to me and so I didn't engage with them fully which took away some of the power and heartbreak of the story.
A good read.

Great writing and fantastic premise.
It was fascinating to read and at times utterly heart breaking.

I read this in bed whilst my grandson slept beside me and I cried watching his little face grateful that I wasn't a part of this book's narrative.

A really thought provoking book that will break your heart.

This book was written from multiple perspectives, which was somewhat confusing in parts; but overall I loved having the different storylines in place and following along / catching up with them throughout the book.

Being that we're in a pandemic ourselves; the book resonated with me, as it acknowledged some of how I've been feeling so far regarding our situation. Although this is a work of fiction, I feel it captured the situational terror perfectly, and made me acknowledge that although we may not know how or why this is happening, we can always try to remain hopeful.

I found the novel surprisingly uplifting. Possibly because it broached how things continued afterwards; but definitely because of how well written each of the characters were.

There's a quote from within that resonated with me; not just in relation to the pandemic, but with regards to dealing with grief; not just for lost loved ones, but for a number of things that could be lost.

"We can never regain what we have lost and we must accept that, mourn that, grieve what cannot be, and find a new way to exist."

The story of a catastrophic pandemic, spreading swiftly throughout the world, and its impact on the people it doesn’t kill. Infecting only men (while women are carriers), even in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic this tale packs a punch. Across the world, men fall victim and die, leaving women having to recreate order from the chaos that ensues. Told from many perspectives ‘The End of Men’ delivers a gripping storyline, of courage, determination, grief and remembrance. I was hooked from the start and read it in two sittings. It stays with you, as now these events don’t feel quite as improbable as they once would have.
With my thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

If you’d come across this book 18 months ago, you’d have thought it was terrifying and unreal, almost a scifi scenario. Fast forward to 2020 and here we are. A pandemic sweeping the whole world, at breakneck speed.

I found the book terrifying at times, but also reassuring, because life does go on. 97% of the male population die from a deadly virus, women carry it, but don’t succumb to it. The speed with which people die gave no time to help or treat them. Whole families …husbands, sons, grandfathers, all gone. No time to grieve.

But, as I said, life goes on and the world becomes a very different place, where women outnumber men 9-1. It actually felt quite empowering, because going forward, hugely important decisions were being taken mostly by women. And quite different views as a result.

It gave me lots to think about, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

This book was written before COVID 19, and I suspect that it has been revised in the light of what we now know as there are many aspects that are all to familiar. Or maybe I am doing the author a disservice and she really did have the imagination to foresee many things that most of us could never have imagined.

The subject of the novel is a great idea, but the author tries to cover too much, so many aspects are unconvincing. For example:

- with the very short incubation period of the virus, why does a mother shut her son in solitary confinement for months?

- with an immunity test available, why were testing kits not sent to the ship anchored off Iceland with the food and medicine supplies that were air-lifted in?

- why did expectant mothers not know the sex of the babies they were carrying?

- would there really be such a massive take-up of a women-only dating app?

I really wanted to like this book, and for about the first half I found it intriguing, meeting people around the world, coping as best they could, but the further in I got with so many characters and so many issues such as feminism, politics, gender touched on but not dealt with thoroughly, it became more and more unsatisfying.

I assume that the book will have a thorough proof-read before publication and that the following will be corrected: Catherine is offered a house in Devon which, two paragraphs on, changes to Suffolk, and later back to Devon. And please change 'recuss' to 'resus'!

A really well-written, eerily lifelike look at what would happen if a pandemic disproportionately affected men, killing over 90% of the male population.

Christina does a great job in telling a story through voices of many, delving into how a catastrophic event like this would affect all aspects of society.

A true page-turner, would thoroughly recommend.

In the current climate, where we are self-proclaimed Covid 19 experts, it seems practically impossible to judge The End of Men using the normal reviewing criteria, i.e. plot, characters, style, etc. The natural instinct is to assess its accuracy, written as it was about eighteen months before the current pandemic spread beyond Asia, like some set of Nostradamus predictions.
Christina Sweeney- Baird’s debut novel opens in Glasgow at the end of 2025. It quickly becomes clear to a female ED Consultant that there is a serious problem, when men present with flu- like symptoms and a 10% survival rate. The public health authorities disregard her warnings, and soon ‘The Male Plague’ has spread first across the UK and then globally. The government has no real idea what to do, civil servants are occupied fully, figuring how to spread unethical and unpalatable new regulations to the populace, and two scientists are working on a vaccine. Sound familiar? It does to me.
As I sweet talk myself off my soapbox, just a reminder that this fictional plague has far- reaching consequences- rationing, famine, war, break-up of countries, and is ongoing for five years before there is a vaccine breakthrough. A great deal of research has obviously been given over to these implications, discussed through the voices of the ED Consultant, a Social Anthropologist, a Civil Servant, several virologists and various other interested parties. But there are far too many of these voices to attach much character to any of them, and just when you get interested in how this will pan out, the discussion focuses more or less on the morality of selling vaccine rights, single sex dating apps and the implications for the LGBT community.
There is no doubt that this is the best time sales-wise for this book, but whether it would pass the other tests, plot, good characterisation and style otherwise is doubtful.
With thanks to Netgalley UK and HarperCollins UK

I was worried that reading a book about a global flu like pandemic while being on lockdown during an actual real time global pandemic would be too unsettling and macabre but I could not put this book down. It is so well written and the characters were all very relatable. It made me laugh and cry at times but totally absorbed me. The fact the author wrote this in 2018 is quite spooky as there are many similarities but the pandemic in the book is much much worse so that is quite comforting. The virus only affects males but can be carried by women so quite soon the world is in a perilous situation as men hold most senior jobs and positions of power when they all die quite suddenly how will the world be run. As well as looking at how individuals and families are changed by this virus it also looks at society and the way we live our lives. A really fascinating read which really made me think about society, grief and politics.

A confronting book particularly being in the midst of a pandemic! I did enjoy the way that the author foresaw the future, the ways in which society and science fought to overcome the effects of the pandemic and the deaths, the political maneuverings going on behind the scenes and how the health service (and its workers) deal with everything. I would read more by this author. Recommended.

So, written in 2018, this book is a speculative look at the world if a pandemic struck. A flu-like pandemic. All over the world.

That depressing bit of foresight aside, this disease has a 90% mortality rate of all men that it infects, but doesn’t affect women. This means that men all over the world; dads, husbands, sons, coworkers, politicians, good men and the worst of men, died within days of infection.

The story picks up at the very beginning of the pandemic and runs through to what the world looks like after a vaccine has been found, much further down the line than it turns out Covid took (three cheers for science!).

What captivated me – suddenly women are needed to do the jobs that have been dominated by men. The world needs electricians, engineers and lorry drivers.
Women are promoted faster and paid more, technology evolves to suit female needs, fertility, sex and women’s health is viewed in a completely different way.
So many little issues are slipped in to the narrative that it takes a step back to realise the scope of what the author’s included.

The story is written from the perspectives of various women involved in the discovery of the disease and the fight for getting the world back on track. They’re all very different from each other (one of them is a tremendous douche) and this lets us see even more of the ways that women would be affected by this kind of situation.

It bears being said that this book isn’t ‘screw all men’, the world is broken by grief but the story explores what other impacts the loss of men would have on society.

"The End of Men" by Christina Sweeney-Baird is a gripping story seems much more realistic now than it would have a year ago!

In this narrative a virus breaks out that only affects men (though women are carriers), threatening the future of the human race, if a vaccine is not found in time. Once infected, male victims are overcome in a matter of days. The fabric of society needs to change very quickly as women are required to fulfill the roles of their stricken male colleagues. Of course, some women are more seriously affected than others depending on the composition of their family circle's which leads to further resentment.

The author has created a believable scenario with realistic characters, each presented with different problems due to their individual circumstances. I particularly enjoyed the post-vaccine chapters as people try to deal with issues in a female dominated world.

Great read - especially poignant during the times of COVID! I really enjoyed the different ways the pandemic was dealt with and how different countries re-built. I would highly recommend this book.

I have always loved dystopian novels, particularly ones concerned with the aftermath of a world-changing plague or pandemic, particular favourites including Emily St John Mandel's "Station Eleven" and Stephen King's "The Stand." I did wonder whether the events of 2020 might impair my enjoyment of this genre going forward, but I'm happy to say that doesn't seem to be the case: I love, love, LOVED this beautifully written novel with its intriguing and original premise: a super-flu with an almost 100% fatality rate, but only in men.

What follows is the gradual unravelling of how a world adapts and changes - some of which is eerily familiar given the events of the last year, and some of which is pertinent only to this particular plot, ie, how a society can continue to ensure the functioning of certain sectors which were predominantly staffed by males, such as security, refuse collection, and police departments; how dating and procreation can work in a landscape where men are vastly outnumbered by women; how the LGBTQ+ community is impacted, etc.

I loved how the narrative unfolded on different continents and via different narrators, and also how each character's arc was completely unique, even if there were certain similarities across the board. This is such a thorough and well-told story, and one that deals with genuinely intriguing questions, even as it completely fulfils its brief of being a page-turning thriller dealing with a global pandemic and mass infection.

I couldn't put this book down, and will absolutely recommend it to everyone I know. A fantastic novel, and I can't wait to see what this author does next.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher, who provided me with a free ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Readable enough but disappointing the both the scientific and social oh local implications of the plague. It didn’t really stack up. Plus too many narratives to follow and no real engagement with any of the characters

I was really intrigued by the premise of this book: what would happen if there was a virus that wiped out much of the male population? The author makes it clear that the book was drafted before the outbreak of Covid-19 however many readers will find it hard not to draw parallels when the real virus has a higher rate of severe illness and mortality in the male population than females. In a way, I think it is unfortunate for the author that the global pandemic hit as she was writing this book as the general population will be more aware of the science of virology and genetics than previously.

My background is in physics so my biology knowledge is not the strongest however I found myself puzzling over one character's explanation of why it appeared to take 135 days (p160) for scientists to be able to explain that the vulnerability of males to the virus was related to the fact that they only had one X chromosome. The character then went on to use male twins to explain why only 10% of the male population is immune and claiming it was "Basic genetic logic." (p162) I hold my hands up to not being a geneticist but if "the Plague requires the absence of a specific gene sequence...present in the X chromosome" and only "9 percent of men" have the necessary protection, this implies that each X chromosome has a 9% chance of creating immunity. For women, this probability does not increase to 100% because they have two X chromosomes. If the above 9% is true then I would assume that the immunity rate for women is double (as you only need one correct copy). As all women were immune it would have made more sense for the vulnerability to have been coded into the Y chromosome with only 9% of Y chromosomes conferring resistance. This theory is undermined by the explanation of finding that "identical twins were both immune but their father was not [and a] set of male fraternal twins has an immune father but only one of the twins was immune".

This, unfortunately, wasn't the least of my science-based confusion. I could perhaps go along with the A&E doctor who was ignored (presumably for being a hysterical woman) at the beginning of the pandemic but much of the early part of the book implied that despite the fact men were dying in ever-increasing numbers, the pandemic wasn't taken seriously. There are numerous papers etc that discuss the fact that historically the medical community has focussed predominantly on health concerns that disproportionately affect men. For a modern-day comparison, one could point to the immediate interest in treating 'Long Covid' compared to the response to the arguably similar conditions ME/CFS which predominantly affect women. Towards the end of the book, there is a brief reference to advances in the treatment of endometriosis etc however this seems poorly extrapolated to the global response throughout the novel.

I was also surprised that the author thought it likely that the source of the pandemic would have been sought out by the same A&E doctor a long while later. Here again, the author is likely to be scuppered by the public's unprecedented access to information on a global pandemic. Genetic sequencing of the virus usually gives researchers an idea of what species the virus mutated from even if Patient Zero is never identified and it is one of the first things that researchers will look at.

The final section imagines how the world would be once a vaccine was created and I found this equally bemusing. Perhaps I am alone here but if only 10% of the male population was left, I find it hard to believe that there would just be a "lottery" or another system for women to have a form of IVF without some form of compulsory sperm donation program? Maybe I missed that part but I would have thought a priority would have been acquiring adequate sperm to repopulate which may have lead to potential human rights infringement protests from males who wanted to retain choice. It was unclear to me why only China would have split into 12 independent states and the Moldovan women would have chosen to imprison all the remaining males for participating in sex trafficking (this seemed particularly broad sweeping). Instead, those with traditional families and immune husbands seemed to carry on as though nothing had changed whilst the risk of population collapse lingered. It also came across that many women were happy to switch to single-sex relationships, as though sexual preference/orientation is purely a product of your environment. If this plotline had been switched to imply the remaining gay men became heterosexual, would there possibly be more raised eyebrows?

Ignoring these scientific logic flaws, my biggest gripe with the novel is probably that even though the author attempted to tell the story of the pandemic from a large cast of characters' perspectives, they all ended up sounding very similar. This meant that I was constantly having to try to remind myself which character was which even though the names and cities were listed at the beginning of each chapter. As far as I remember, there was one male character perspective and the rest were females that seemed to be from very similar socioeconomic backgrounds. I felt as though the women were also of similar ages with a heavy emphasis on how desperate these women are to have children. There lacked the nuance of the perspectives of straight women who chose not to have children for example.

I did read to the end but I think this novel can be summed up as "not for me".

The foreword of this book states that the author wrote this book in 2018, which in our current pandemic situation all around the world seems remarkable as to how many parts of the pandemic in the book actually came to become reality just a short while later.
Parts like global travel being blocked, wearing masks, money and jobs becoming obsolete etc. were things that couldn't really be easily contemplated a short time ago but have been accurately predicted in this.
For that aspect of the book, hats off to the author.
It does make you wonder how much more of an impact this book may have had, had it actually been released before everyone is experiencing some aspect of Covid-affected life. It would have had a much greater impact I think had I read this a year or two ago.
For the actual story-four stars from me. It does jump about a bit too much over a few too many characters so that you don't really share their grief, joy etc to the extent that it could, or perhaps should, have been felt. You start getting interested in a character and then the book completely shifts ahead in time and focuses on somebody else, which was a bit frustrating at times. That along with some of the newspaper/podcast type chapters, which don't really come out properly on Kindle format, were my only complaints.
However, a recommended read from me. Thank you as ever for the ARC.

What a cracking page turner that really sets the pace from page one and keeps going. Reading this in the middle of a pandemic just gives that extra bit of interest and perspective. There is realism with how the deadly make plague was mishandled and then blamed, that we all can relate to. There is the relief that covid is nowhere near as deadly as the make plague. And the stories of individual loss, gains and how the world evolved in a new order to cope with the changes just keeps the reading light on way after bed time.

It begins in Glasgow - a flu-type virus, fatal to almost half the population. Like any successful virus, it spreads in secrecy, jumping from victim to victim in the early days of infection, spreading asymptomatically and being passed from friend to friend, colleague to colleague, parent to child.

By the time the symptoms emerge, it is too late. This is a virus with almost a 100% mortality rate for those in one particular group. Unfortunately, that group makes up almost half the world’s population.

Told through a series of vignettes, the novel charts the course of the virus as it sweeps across the world, and the human costs and achievements of the battle against it.

The narrative is genuinely heart-breaking at times , but The End of Men is by no means a one trick pony. It’s also a story of determination and accomplishment, of over-coming barriers, and of societal change. There’s maybe a small amount of revenge, too – I think I’d find it quite satisfying to build a world where men were forced to endure the attitudes and attentions that have been foisted on women all this time.

Sweeney-Baird actually wrote this in 2018/19, so it’s complete happenstance that we’ve ended up with a real-life flu-like viral pandemic that adversely affects men more than women around the time of publication. I’m not sure whether that means more or fewer people will buy the book (it’s slated for publication in
April 2021), but I found it compelling enough to read over a 24-hour period. Hopefully, by April we’ll be far along enough with vaccinations to allow The End of Men the exposure it deserves.

I received an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.