This book is a Marmite book, you will either love it or hate it. Unfortunately i was on the hate side! I don’t hate it but I didn’t like it! This book depressed me, It was bleak and the writing was horrific, It was full of repetition
The timeline is weird. Not worth reading in my opinion.

This is a book about the relationship between three brothers, Nils, Benjamin and Pierre. The timeline jumps from past to present and I found it hard to keep track at some points because it was not always clear what had happened or was happening now. I did enjoy learning about the brothers and their parents. Throughout the book we never learn their last name, the boys are referred to by first name only and the parents are simply ‘Mum and Dad’. I think the fact that we are not given a last name actually made the characters more relatable to me.
There was an unexpected twist at the end of the book, which I found surprising, but I think it explains the Mother’s behaviour towards Benjamin. The book to me felt deeply personal and it prompted me to think about my own experience growing up.
I would recommend this book to others. Thank you to Netgalley and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I found this quite a tough read, felt like I was missing something most the way through. Had to push myself to read all the way through.

A heartbreaking family saga. A reunion of brothers to scatter their mothers ashes. Set at the summer house. Its a different read as you go back and forth between time but a good story with poignant moments.

Oh wow that was bleak. And not interesting bleak, just depressing bleak.
The timeline is weird, it's all jumbled and all over the place.
There is a twist at the end, but it's not as shocking as you would have hoped for after surviving all that bleakness.
This book is basically on big repetition - 5 scenes or so being repeated in 10 different ways. Just trauma, terrible parenting and tragedy.
If you're into trauma porn and books that lead to nothing then go for it.

This book was very well written, very atmospheric. I enjoyed it overall. I think if you like stories, family dramas about siblings, it's a very good one. Three brothers were interesting as well. So, all in all a good read.

This is one of those books that I think you are either going to like or not. A story of three brothers, their lives growing up and also of their lives as they are now and trying to recall certain events.

It was a book that I wasn't too sure about, or at least that was what I thought, but there was something about the writing and the story that captured my attention. It kept me turning the pages and a few hours later I had finished reading the book!

The story is told in a past and present way, and the timeline of the story isn't quite what I expected. The present time was told backwards and while this may sound a bit strange it really worked for the story. It is a story that is in some ways a mystery but I didn't realise until further into the book.

The author uses a cottage in the woods for the main section of the story as the three brothers grow up, their parents are a strange pair and the main character of Benjamin, one of the brothers, is always aware of tensions within the family. Quite why it is mainly him does get explained further along with the story.

It is a story that isn't happy, but as I mentioned earlier there is something quite magnetic about it. A slow burner that veers towards literary fiction that focuses on a family and what life brings. It is not until almost the end of the book when suddenly things slot into place and there is a Eureka moment as I realised what the whole point of this story was. It was a journey through the life of the family but the destination was something that had happened in the past.

I really enjoyed this one and I could not put it down, it was mesmerising, heartbreaking and I adored it. I would definitely recommend it.

I didn't gel with The Survivors as I would have expected. I'm not sure why, exactly. Stories set at a family summer lake house with flashes of childhood happenings molding the reflective adult tend to go down a storm with me. The writing was very good. Better than that, even, as the descriptions are rather sparing and spartan yet conveyed perfectly the time, place and event without any flowery devices. That takes great skill. Perhaps because I didn't particularly like or dislike Nils, Benjamin or Pierre, the three brothers? I also found a couple of events within the novel disturbing. I expect that left a lingering film on my view. But, as I said, The Survivors was very well written. Worth a read for that alone.

Schulman’s The Survivors is a dark, unnerving and unsettling story - and utterly irresistible.

It is beautifully written, even the most extreme events are told in a quiet voice that holds the reader in tight suspense for something unknown that might or might not happen. It is the story of three brothers who grew up in a dysfunctional family. The narration is non-linear and starts at the end, with an event that is ‘only the last ripple on the water, the one furthest out, the one with the most distance from the point of impact’.

Schulman takes us back to this ‘point of impact’, to the place of their childhood: a family cottage in quite a remote place where they spent long summers with their abusive parents. It is the kind of abuse were love, anger and neglect go full circle and create an atmosphere where the children learnt to lead a guarded life in order to protect themselves from the worst excesses of their -often drunk – parents’ love and wrath. None of the three manages to escape this experience unscathed, each one of them has his own daemons to fight and to live with.

Benjamin, the middle brother, is the most obvious affected, due to a very traumatic event that happened when he was still a little boy. But he is also the one who somehow manages to keep them together, seems to understand a lot of what is going on around him due to his hypersensitivity allowing him to foresee the next move any of his family members is about to make.

The brothers get together to scatter their mother’s ashes and they return to the place of their childhood. What in other circumstances could have been a time for reconciliation, opens up the old festering wounds. Although they are not without love and care for each other, the past catches up with them and lays bare their raw emotions: resentment, guilt and sibling rivalry. All of it spills into the open after it had been buried in the past for a long time.

The narrative structure of this novel is complex but Schulman holds it together and makes it work. This is a devastating story, elegantly written and emotionally charged. I loved it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Fleet for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

The three brothers, Nils, Benjamin and Pierre, have returned to their summer cottage by the lake twenty years after a tragedy that changed all their lives. They are there to spread the ashes of their mother. After a childhood stained by alcoholism and neglect, each has grown up damaged in some way.
The reviews are generally extremely positive for this book but I was not as impressed as many. The story is sad but the jumps between past and present are a little confusing and the narrative messy. The twist is good but not altogether unexpected. I did enjoy some fo the writing and the imagery around the hot summer days remembered is often very good.

This was a book that I really struggled to read. I love Scandinavian authors and particularly Scandi-Noir, but The Survivors didn’t live up to my expectations for a book in this genre. It’s hard-hitting and the traumatic experiences of the three estranged brothers was heart-breaking to read.

My biggest issue with this book was the complete disorientation of trying to figure out whether the events that are unfolding are from the past or present which meant that I struggled to follow along with the story. It also seemed to really drag in places which didn’t help with my following of the plot either. Not for me I’m afraid!

Thanks to NetGalley and to the publishers for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

The Survivors is out in October 2021 and published by Little, Brown Book Group UK

The title is inspired because from what I understood that is just about what the three bothers did… survive. It was a hard to follow book with some truly awful incidents to read about. Not one I can really recommend

I was looking forward to reading this book and had high expectations but sadly I just couldn’t get into the story at all. Unfortunately this was not the book for me,

A very moving book. It was difficult to read at times at the story is so tragic. It's very sad, dark but a very thoughtful read that will stay with you long after you've read the last page.

The story reads like a jigsaw puzzle, you are given the outside pieces- three brothers are scattering their Mothers ashes - then the middle pieces are filled in in a random order. This makes the story sometimes difficult to follow.
However, learning about the lives of the three neglected brothers often through Benjamin's thoughts makes an interesting read. An underlying sense of violence seeps through the telling and i found that although not my normal reading genre, I could not put the book down until the last piece of the jigsaw was in place.
Compelling, but not an easy read.

This is a hard book to review. The descriptive writing is effective and clearly portrays the boys' childhood and issues that follow them into adulthood but it is not an easy emotional read, Life was pretty grim for them which is uncomfortable to read, in fact quite depressing, there is no joy anywhere.
I did not find the differing timelines difficult to follow at all. We start at present day and then that timeline moves backwards to reveal what happened two hours before, and two hours before that and so on. In-between these there are flashbacks to when they were growing up.
So the book is well written but the subject matter is bleak.

I'm a bit stuck here. I found it quite rambly and sluggish, so much so I considered giving up. It took till nearly halfway through before we started getting to the crux. Strangely, although I haven't got the best imagination, I could see everything in my mind's eye. I think it would make a great screen adaption and I think I'd probably like it better than the book. The family the lads come from are awful in its fullest sense and the ending was really very sad. The backwards/forwards timeline is different but I don't think it helped me enjoy the story.

The Survivors by Alex Schulman
Pub Date 7 October 2021
Years ago, they fled the lake house.
Now, the brothers have returned.
Three brothers return to the family cottage by the lake where, more than two decades earlier, a catastrophe changed the course of their lives. Now, they are here to scatter their mother's ashes - young men, estranged but bound together by the history that defines them. Their lives have been spent competing for their father's favour and their mother's love, in a household more like a minefield than a home. So what happened that summer day when everything was blown to pieces?
The Survivors is the first novel I have read by Alex Schulman. The synopsis interested me, and I was looking forward to beginning the book. However, as the story developed, I was disappointed that I found it all a bit disorientating when it jumped in and out of timelines between the boy's adolescence and adulthood.
I endeavoured to follow the plot, but this did distract me enough to spoil the enjoyment of this read.
I want to thank NetGalley, Little Brown Book Group UK, and author Alex Schulman for a pre-publication copy to review.

The Survivors is the story of three brothers Nils, Benjamin and Pierce and their uneasy childhood with their alcoholic parents. As the middle brother we read a lot about Benjamin's perspective of his brothers and parents and their childhood, alongside the present time where he meets his brothers again following the death of his mother. I loved how the psychology of siblings was explored and as one of three myself, there always seems to be one who takes a nurturing role, an observer, and Benjamin has a reason to long for more from his emotionally detached mother. It's almost like they just don't know how to parent and finding it so difficult but not knowing how to change, not even realising there is anything wrong but wanting what they think is best for their three sons. I found the dynamic between the siblings so interesting to read, with the twist at the end being traumatic and surprising.

3 brothers gather at their family’s old lakeside cottage to scatter the ashes of their mother. The Survivors interleaves the brothers’ day in hours going backwards with the story of their last family holiday at the cottage, which ended in an awful tragedy.
I found this an incredibly moving book. Benjamin, Pierre and Nils parents are thoughtless and sometimes cruel, yet capable of love in small doses. The boys almost bring themselves up as they use the lake and forest as their play area. Tragedy seems almost inevitable but it is testament to Alex Shulman’s storytelling that he keeps the full denouement until the final pages, allowing the realisation of what actually happened to turn the rest of the book on its head. This is a very skilful novel, the prose is sparing and thoughtful, it guides you and allows you to make your own decisions about the characters and their actions. It will be with me for a long time. Thank you to #netgalley and #LittleBrownUK for allowing me to review this ARC