This book caught me off guard with how good it was. I was a little unclear at the start on the gauntlet but I was soon swept up in it.

Ava Reid has proven again that she is an astonishing, skilled writer who handles bold and thought provoking topics deftly for a YA audience.

I loved that in this dystopian setting we had an eternal optimist in the form of Inesa. Her inability to see the worst in the world, despite every sign that she should, made her so endearing. I loved the storyline of the Angels and I think Melinoés character arc was superb.

Definitely recommend!

Ava Reid can do no wrong! Her influences from classic YA dystopia really showed through, and as always her characters are multifaceted and sympathetic. Love

BOOK REVIEW: Fable for the End of the World by Ava Reid @delreyuk @netgalley #adprproduct

2 Stars

I was so excited for this book as I adore dystopian books and it sounded really interesting. Unfortunately it ended up being a disappointment.

The dystopian storyline is based where climate change and radiation has ravaged the world. A corporation has taken over and it runs on a credit based system. If you hit a debt of too many credits, you have to nominate a family member to enter the Gauntlet, where an Angel (a bionic and chemically engineered human with suppressed emotions and lethal training and instincts) hunts them down. The Gauntlet is broadcast across the city for everyone to see. After our lead female Inesa is nominated in for the games by her mentally ill mother, her brother, a hunter helps her try to escape the Angel. The Angel is called Melinoë and she is known for being cold and deadly.

The story is VERY Hunger Games meets Legend by Marie Lu, meets Divergent. I liked the story but it just didn't have enough depth or unique features. I also found the story to be super repetitive, filled with plot holes and a HUGE lack of worldbuilding. I nearly DNFed many times but I liked the lead females so stuck with it for them. Unfortunately the ending caused what would have been a 3 star rating to drop an entire point. This is a standalone apparently, but it doesn't end like one and it annoyed me SO much.

I really like Inesa and her bravery and kindness. She has had a tough life and has every reason to be filled with hate and anger but she isn't. I loved her bond with her brother too.
I also found the journey Melinoë went on to be really interesting and loved the connection between her and Inesa. It was meant to be enemies to lovers, but I wouldn't go quite that far.

The writing was fine, if a little bland and monotonous at times. It was the lack of detail that really ruined it for me.

Overall, there are much better dystopian books out there and although there was some decent imagination, it often felt copied from other books.

A dystopian, Hunger Games/ Running Man style game show premise, with flooded streets and mutant animals. Sign me up!
Unfortunately I think to truly appreciate this book you have to care about the romance, and it just didn't make sense to me.
I will say that I wasn't sure where the story was going to go, and I like that I was kept guessing right until the last few pages. In some ways though I was a little let down by the ending.
A difficult one to rate!

Wtf 😅😅😅😅

A Fable for the End of the World is a sapphic dystopian YA that will resonate deeply with your teen-self. If you loved The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner, then this is the book for you.

Themes include:

-Dystopian Setting
-Enemies to Lovers
-Found Family
-Sapphic Romance
-Hunter vs the Hunted

I was captivated by this book from the start. Surprisingly fast-paced and easy to follow, I devoured it in just three sittings. Reid has quickly become an auto-buy author for me; her descriptions of the environment, surroundings and people are so vivid that I never struggle to picture her characters and worlds in my mind. Plus, she's an awesome human.

Reid's ability to weave together complex plots and multi-dimensional characters showcases her exceptional talent as a storyteller. The novel's pacing is well-crafted, balancing moments of intense action with quieter, more intimate passages that allow for deeper character connections.

The story centres around themes of hope and resilience, offering strong perspectives on the nature of humanity. These themes make it an emotionally impactful read that stays with you long after you've turned the final page.

Huge thanks to DelReyUK for the ARC

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

“And maybe that’s all it takes—at least at the beginning. Just a few people who care.”

The Last of Us meets Crier’s War meets The Hunger Games in Ava Reid’s new dystopian fantasy.

Fable for the End of the World is a standalone dystopian sapphic romance about survival, sacrifice, and love that risks everything.

I loved Reid’s atmospheric writing and thought that the book was very fast paced throughout and the tension constantly high. The story was beautiful yet horrifying and devastating at the same time.

Inesa and Melinoë are two really strong female characters each with their own story and motivations, which are brought together in the most brutal way.

Thank you @delrey for the proof

When I think back to YALC 2024 and the way I fought tooth and nail for this book. And for what? PAIN!!! Endless, torturous, slow, and debilitating pain.

And at this point I should expect no less from Ava.

This starts off with the most beautiful love letter to the hunger games. As a girl who was there for the OG dystopian novel high, it was beautiful to read and you can definitely see the influence that series has on this book. But my lord does it take on a life of its own.

I won’t go too much into the pain of the world itself, you should discover that for yourself but what I will say is the commentary on women in the media, consumerism, sexuality, love, gender (honestly I can go on forever) is, as always, so beautifully done.

And the romance, the spark of hope in a bleak and devastating world, had me physically grabbing my chest to stop me falling apart, the complex feelings of two very different souls, with struggles the other could never really understand, and the hope they give each other. I can’t put into words how they made me feel.

The end? You’ll have to read it to find out but keep the tissues (and junk food) close by.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this advanced reader's copy and the opportunity to this early. Review has been posted on Waterstones and Amazon.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. - arc & monthly book box pick reviewer

This is one the most hyped books of 2025, and since it has a queer main couple, I was all grabby hands. I just needed to read it! I haven't read any f/f dystopia, so I was very excited for it! However, it just didn't do it for me.

We have chapters from both girls, of Inesa's and Mel's. You really feel for both of them, that's for sure. Inesa has a brother with whom she has an agreement not to talk about both elephants in the room namely the dad who abandoned them and a mother who is self-absorbed and who blames everything on Inesa while her brother is a golden boy who can do no wrong. She is imprisoned within her family and imprisoned by society, too. Their debts get higher and higher, and there is no way out.

Mel has been stripped of everything that makes her her. Her memories get wiped, her face altered, her body pumped with various substances. She is at the mercy of Azrael, her handler and creators of the atrocious Gauntlets. She is also a victim of her circumstances, of poverty, of lack of privilege. She is designed to be a weapon that kills at the Gauntlets. Anything else should not exist. But her feelings still exist. Her mind starts to push against the program's unspeakable "treatments" and I do believe that she will get out, at some point.

I rooted for both girls, and I liked both, but I didn't feel the romance at all. Each girl starts having feelings for the other because they're pretty? Their attraction, I can get. But actual feelings just like that when one of them is meant to kill the other? To me, it felt forced, and I couldn't get invested in their romance.

I haven't read any of the author's previous work, but many readers say that she is known for her atmospheric prose. This book didn't have it, in my opinion, and perhaps, it was by design. I don't know. I just felt like it was very wordy, paragraphs were long, and there were plenty instances of page after page of commentary and/or worldbuilding descriptions. I did feel the author's heart on the story, though. This book certainly means a lot to her, and I felt her devotion to it. However, for me, the worldbuilding didn't feel fresh, it felt like a natural devolvement of our society seeing the world's current state.

I'm not a fan of the ending, either. It felt very anticlimactic, an awkward bittersweet ending that had me sighing.

Suffice to say, this was def not for me, but others might feel different! I mean, we finally have a YA queer dystopia! This can open the path to so many other stories by authors of marginalized backgrounds.

It is the monthly pick for a YA March box, and I will skip.

Loved loved loved this, it's hunger games meets climate change but without a super happy ending. I would definitely love to read more, maybe an overthrow of the system

I’m afraid I will need to DNF this book. It’s truly nothing to do with the authors writing or the story, I’m just not the biggest fan of dystopian fiction I’m realising! (Which is okay!!!). Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read it :)

Ava Reid is an instant buy author for me, and has been for a while. I’m also a HUGE lover of dystopian fantasies.

Fable for the End of the World is one of my most anticipated reads for 2025, and I’m thrilled that I have almost no notes - Ava Reid has done it again. I appreciate that Fable is a standalone novel, however, I do feel like there’s potential scope to go back to New Amsterdam.

I loved the juxtaposition of Mel and Inesa, our two FMCs, my only niggle would be to know more about Mel’s background in particular, how did she become an Angel?

This is a great step into dystopian fantasy for anyone who hasn’t ventured into the genre before, but also a welcomed familiar feeling for any dystopian lover.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A really wonderful sapphic dystopian I was eager for since 1) I’m a huge fan of dystopian fiction and 2) I’ve loved everything Ava Reid has ever published. Fable for the End of the World was no exception and I enjoyed it so much I might have to reread already.

🌧️ Fable For The End of The World • Ava Reid 🌧️
★★★.𝟱

Read if you enjoy:
🌧️ YA dystopian
🌧️ Sapphic romance
🌧️ Enemies to lovers
🌧️ Forced proximity
🌧️ Cyberpunk assassins
🌧️ Explores inequality of wealth
🌧️ Exposure of over-consumerism
🌧️ Survival in the Wild

Caerus is the people who sell things the impoverished cannot afford and then collect on the debt in the most grim way possible. Once a debt reaches 500,000 credits, the people in debt can offer up a family member to participate in the Gauntlet. For Inesa, it’s her mother that offers her up to be a Lamb in the Gauntlet which will be televised nationally. Melinoë is one of the assassin’s, or ‘Angel’s’, trained to kill Lamb’s, and she is desperately seeking redemption after her last Gauntlet. Inesa’s only option is to run, with Melinöe on her heels.

This was described as The Last of Us meets The Hunger Games. But it felt more teenage Terminator to me. I loved the cyberpunk assassins and was incredibly fascinated by their unique training. I also really enjoyed the depiction of a climate-ravaged world. One that is victim to biblical flooding and radiation, creating a drowned setting full of mutated creatures which both Inesa and Melinöe need to survive. The setting creates a fraught atmosphere which help Inesa and Melinöe to trauma bond. But whilst the ‘Fable’ in the title brings to mind a romance of fairytale-esque proportions, the forced proximity blossoming between the two teenagers did not work for me, particularly with the emphasis on ‘forced’.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy. Although I don't read much YA these days, I was tempted to read this for two reasons, firstly because I have enjoyed most of the author's previous work but also because like the author, the hunger games was very influential to me. I was worried that it might be too close to the inspiration but actually I found that the characters were unique and I enjoyed both POVs, especially some of the more reflective moments in Melinoë's story. I think part of why the hunger games resonated with me so much is that it is easy to imagine how our society could transform into it's dystopian version, and I think that this book mostly succeeded in giving me that same feeling, as corporate greed and power is a very relevant topic to us today. I think that I just wanted a tiny bit more from the book, a more in depth look at the society (perhaps for example a POV of a city dweller watching the coverage), but overall recommend this book and find it worthy to be compared to the hunger games.

4.5 stars

What a beautiful story! This was my first book by Ava Reid, and I will absolutely be reading more. This dual POV story follows 'The Angel' and 'The Lamb' as they navigate a deadly game in a post-nuclear world.

I read somewhere that this wasn't supposed to be a big dystopian epic, and I agree that it wasn't. The world-building was quite light, and I had some questions at the end. However, I was totally okay with that. This snippet of time worked very well on its own and provided a window into this world of capitalism. I also really enjoyed the social commentary aspects that looked at climate change, femininity, consumerism, and more. Although these themes were used with a light touch, I enjoyed the deeper thoughts that they inspired while I was reading.

My favourite aspect was the writing because it was gorgeous. I found myself highlighting lots of passages throughout and noticing the subtle shifts in the way each character throughout as the story progressed. First-person dual POV can be a bit hit-or-miss for me, but it was the perfect way to tell this tale. I felt completely transported while reading.

I would suggest not comparing this book with other 2010s dystopians while reading. It is a fantastic story that deserves to be judged on its own merits!

This is my first book by Ava Reid but I don't think it will be my last!

I love dystopian YA books more than oxygen so I obviously enjoyed this.

I enjoyed Inesa's POV more than Melinoe's but I can't really put my finger on why. They both had their own voices and it was clear who was speaking during each chapter.

I do wish the romance was more of a slow build up as it went from attempted murder to love in a few steps, but then at 17 doesn't everyone just fall in love really easily?!

The way the Angels are treated as a commodity both during their active service and after (decommissioned) made me rage, especially where it touches on how little autonomy they have over their own bodies.

Overall, a really good YA dystopian novel that is set in the definitely not to distant future and it is bleak AF.

Ava Reid's writing never fails to captivate me so it's really no shock to me that I loved this book. The world sucks you in and keeps you wanting more and the romance? Swoonworthy!

"We all do what we have to do in order to survive." This book ouch! Inesa lives with her mother and brother, her dad disappeared one night and since then her and Luka do whatever they can to survive. Her mother has multiple problems, including her debt how to get out of debt well she choses to make Inesa a lamb in the gauntlet. The only way to survive is to win, but who is she up against? A girl who only knows how to kill. Melinoe has been trained and manufactured under Caerus Angel problem, her main job is to kill the lambs in the gauntlet only she's remembering more and more of her past. When challenged with Inesa who appears to be an easy kill with no father, an ill mother and a younger brother who is good with a riffle what will happen? I loves the sibling unity between Luka and Inesa trying to get a head start before the gauntlet they rack up favours that they may not make it back to repay. They fight together til they are separated and at that point Inesa is on her own to survive against Melinoe and al the other creatures out to get her. Only thats when Inesa and Melinoe end up together, the angel is struggling from a withdrawal when her lamb stumbles upon her only she's not alone. The two must team up to try and survive what hunts them both. We see them work together and locate a cabin only they are not as alone as they thought the whole world is still watching. A message letting her know her brother is still alive and giving her the reminder to follow the hope she had the last thing from her dad but was it worth trusting the man who left. The ending of this book, I was not expecting it at all. Just remember "Even a wolf can be gentle if it wants, but you should never forget its teeth."

Fable for the End of the World is a sapphic, YA dystopian set in a society ravaged by climate change and controlled by a powerful, shady corporation who encourage indebting yourself to them. In the foreword, the author describes it as a love letter to the dystopian YA fiction they grew up with in the 2010s, and as a massive fan of that era of dystopian stories, this rings true. There are lots of parallels to The Hunger Games in particular. Innocent young people are forced into a survival situation through no fault of their own. It's all live streamed and turned into entertainment as the 'lambs' are hunted down.

It is fast paced throughout and the tension is constantly high. I almost wished for a bit more time to understand this fascinating society. A bleak, but weirdly believable future. The ending is pretty shocking but ultimately fitting. It left a few question marks that could hint at a sequel, but I've only seen this advertised as a standalone so far. I would happily learn more about this world and what happens next to Inesa and Melinoë if I could, but for now I will just have to speculate!

Recommended for fans of classic YA dystopian from the 2000s/2010s. This story is so reminiscent of that, but thankfully more queer!