Things To Do Before The End Of The World

 

1. Live your best life.

2. Uncover family secrets.

3. Trust no one

What would you do when you hear the news that humans have done such damage to the earth that there might only be a limited amount of safe air left - a year's worth at most?

You'd work through your bucket list, heal rifts, do everything you've never been brave enough to do before?

Olivia is struggling to do any of this. What it is she truly wants to do? Who do she wants to be?

Then out of the blue comes contact from a long-lost cousin Olivia didn't even know existed. Natasha is everything Olivia wants to be and more.

And as the girls meet up for a long, hot last summer, Olivia finds Natasha's ease and self-confidence having an effect on her.

But Natasha definitely isn't everything she first appears to be . . .

Book source ~ Tour

Things To Do Before The End Of The World

Emily Barr

6 May 2021

YA | Sci-Fi | Apocalyptic

320 Pages

My Rating ~ 2 bites

It’s the end of the world. Or soon to be. There’s only so much safe air left to breathe and you’d think people would be panicking, rioting, living it up. But they aren’t. For the most part they’re just going about things, business as usual. Even though there’s less than a year left before everyone croaks. Weird, right?

Olivia is an introverted teenager who decides it’s time to break out of her shell. A little bit. But then her long lost adventurous and confident cousin shows up from the US and Olivia suddenly wishes she could be more like Natasha. No, Olivia. You really don’t.

I received this book as part of The Write Reads tour (now long over) and had a hard time with it. I eventually just did a spotlight for the tour, but the book was lingering on my “currently reading” shelf so I decided to just finish it. While nearly all of the bloggers on the tour liked, even loved, this book, it was not for me. I could not connect with Oliva at all and I loathed Natasha as soon as she hit the pages. I was also expecting more of an apocalyptic setting, but it focuses on Olivia in London then Spain and eventually Paris as she goes about living the rest of her limited days. There’s nothing wrong with this type of narrative. Like I said, I couldn’t connect with the characters. So my rating is purely my feelings about the book and not about the writing which is actually pretty good. Don’t let my disappointment get in the way of picking this up though. You may find you love it!