I read this book through Netgalley and I'm still trying to work out what my actual thoughts are!

It's a dystopian, set years after Coronavirus. A new virus has emerged that kills you within 6 days. It's actually very realistic, very thought provoking and the entire time i was reading it, i kept thinking.... This could actually happen!!!

I really loved the main character but there were a lot of questions left unanswered... Why did she not catch the virus??? And the ending of the book LEFT SOOO MANY PLOT HOLES that i had to rate it 3 stars.

I would definitely recommend to reas it. Its gruesome, but SO realistic and its a worse case scenario, i feel, of what could actually happen!

This is the second eerily prescient book I have read about a global pandemic (the first was the End of Men) and they are both equally brilliant. I especially like how the heroine is not particularly special or well equipped to handle the end of the world as we know it, and has her own demons but manages to find a way through. This resonated with me so much more than any number of protagonists who manage to defeat impossible odds. I also liked how hedonistic she was, sometimes in response to catastrophe you have to party!

Bethany Clift seems to have come up with the idea of this novel while driving home and getting lost in the middle of nowhere. The story is about a woman being the sole survivor of a virus that possibly wiped out the rest of the world. As the author explains in a preface, the first draft was ready in 2019, a few months before the world received the first reports of a new virus in China. In January 2020, her sister joked that the novel was coming true. The rest is history (actually, it’s still present, alas).

The idea behind this book is not new. ‘The Stand’ by Stephen King for instance, or a TV series like ‘The Walking Dead’, basically does the same: picturing how what is left of the human race tries to survive a pandemic. The difference is that Clift doesn’t bring a bunch of survivors with varying skills together in an attempt to rebuild stuff. The nameless protagonist of this novel hasn’t got that many skills, which is probably much more realistic. Most of us don’t know how to restart a power plant, don’t know which berries and mushrooms are safe to eat, don’t know how to kick-start a car without ignition key, don’t know how to set a broken limb, etc. The woman in this book doesn’t know most of these things either, and struggles to survive. She also has to fight loneliness and other emotional issues, resulting from not finding other survivors. This all makes this a very believable story.

Things I liked most about this book:

a) It’s not only about the aftermath of the pandemic. Most of the chapters have some of that, but also contain a lot of flashbacks in which the woman tells us something about what happened before. She doesn’t only talk about the last month before everything collapsed, but also speaks of the years before, and goes deeper into how her life has been (career, friends, emotional issues).

b) On top of other emotions, there is humour. It distinguishes us from other living species, so I liked it a lot that this aspect of humanity survived the pandemic. And very important: it was good humour. One example that made me laugh, after the woman finds a hotel with electricity, booze and a working TV set with on demand movies:

<blockquote>“I got drunk, got horny (yes, it’s weird, but I am sure there are lots, or rather were lots, of studies about how death and sex are linked) and spent an afternoon watching nothing but porn. At least, I planned to spend an afternoon watching nothing but porn, but, after a couple of hours when I just couldn’t face masturbating again, I got bored. When I found myself starting to analyse the plot holes rather than anatomical ones, I turned it off.”</blockquote>

c) There are cliffhangers. With them, Clift makes you often curious and you keep on reading.

Things I didn’t like:

There is not much to tell here. Nearing the end, it started to drag on a little bit but not to an extend that it became annoying. The author ended the book just in time to avoid that. It’s an interesting ending by the way. Kept me wondering if there is more to come someday.

To wrap up: this is a well written, very realistic book about surviving a pandemic with nobody to talk to and to share things with. It’s gripping and makes you think about how dependent we have become of technology and the skills of others to provide for us.

What would you do if you were the lone survivor of a plague that wiped out all of civilisation? Well that’s what our main character is trying to figure out after miraculously surviving the 6DM (Six Days Maximum) plague. It is a pandemic that started in a small town in America where upon infection, a person has six days maximum, before succumbing to death via organ failure. There are no easy deaths here, everyone dies painfully, and there is no hope of recovery. The virus quickly makes its way around the world, decimating societies in its wake, but much like Typhoid Mary, our main character is seemingly immune to the virus, finds herself desperately seeking other survivors whilst trying to figure out if life is really worth living when you are one your own.

I am not going to lie, reading this book in the middle of a pandemic was a bit weird, made weirder still by the author’s references to coronavirus and the ‘mistakes of 2020’. Most people don’t really know how to survive on your own, especially when the rest of nature has continued as normal. Maybe if you are Bear Grylls you would have some idea of how to chase away wild animals, find shelter, grow your own food and find clean water, but for most us, survival relies on those around us. And so for the author to tell of an ‘ordinary’ woman with no previous survival skills, made for quite a fascinating read, especially as the author does not hide away from the mental health implications of being a survivor.

I did feel like some of the writing dragged a little in the middle, but overall I found the story to be very engrossing in both plot and character development. There are quite a few twists to keep the reader on their toes and although the story is quite tragic, it does have quite a dark humour to it as well. I really hope the author keeps the note at the beginning, as it hooked me straight away and offers a lot of context to the story.

Reading this book during a pandemic seemed a bit on the nose at first, but the book gripped me from the start.
Following our protagonist through her journal, and flashes back to her life before 6DM was a wild, and profound ride.
In this book a global virus has killed nearly every single person on earth. Imagine waking up alone in London, surrounded by dead people in their houses, on the streets, in churches etc. She starts sight seeing and tasting the
"high" life, which makes sense. Because who would want to be surrounded by that much death, sober.
We follow her journey through England, breaking into cars/houses/stores etc. I had a field day mentally pillaging big warehouse stores for items.
The book asks bigger questions on who we are, what we need, how we feel being an employee, a wife, a girlfriend and a daughter.
Some bits of the book drag a tiny bit, but overall it's well written and hops back from "now" to earlier parts of her life.

This story was weird in the best ways.

3.5 (almost 4) stars.

If you’re sipping your tea right now and thinking, hmm, I’d really like a quirky read. This is it.

It’s the kind of odd deadpan humour that is quintessentially British - and I LOVE it. I thirst for the sarcasm and wit that this book held in the plenty.

The story is one I picked up mostly out of morbid curiosity. If you’ve read the description you know it focuses on a young woman who has against all odds become the sole survivor of a pandemic.

With Boris right now, I wouldn’t mind becoming that gal for a few days.

And weirdly- even in a pandemic ourselves- this was a kind of uplifting read?

Don’t get me wrong, there are darker aspects of loss, but the humour in this book was warming my cold, pandemic heart. (And making me thankful for what we do have.)

Now, I realise the timing of this book probably wasn’t what the author had foreseen, and the explanation at the beginning of the book made me smile. As someone with family working Covid wards, with family who have been hospitalised- I could still fully enjoy the humour and writing of this book. In fact it made me laugh out loud at multiple points. So to the author- I’m greatly glad you chose to publish this with all matters considered. It’s made me laugh constantly, and truly is a brilliant, uplifting read.

The reasons I marked it down was purely because of the storyline. The progression of someone alone- even with flash backs, and plot twists later on- becomes a slightly drawn out feat. I felt like the aspect works in films to a degree, but in a book, it becomes reliant on twists and shocks that weren’t in this story much (until nearer the end)

I would recommend this book. It’s a truly intriguing read.

Thank you to the publisher for supplying me with an ARC copy of this book.

I really enjoyed this book. If I were to compare this to another book. I would say that it is the British version of station eleven. This is the first pandemic book I enjoyed in a while. I think because it was less about the breakdown of society and more about surviving. If liking the main character is important to you then I would be hesitant about this book. The ending was abrupt but satisfying. I read the book in one sitting.