Until the End of the World - Sarah Lyons Fleming

[goodreads]

Title: Until the End of the World
Author: Sarah Lyons Fleming
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 5/5
# pages: Audiobook - 13hrs, narrated by Julia Whelan
Date read: December 2017, August 2020

Cassie Forrest isn't surprised to learn that the day she's decided to get her life together is also the day the world ends. After all, she's been on a self-imposed losing streak since her survivalist parents died: she's stopped painting, broken off her engagement to Adrian and dated a real jerk. Rectifying her mistakes has to wait, however, because Cassie and her friends have just enough time to escape Brooklyn for her parents' cabin before Bornavirus LX turns them into zombies, too.

This is difficult enough, but Cassie's tag along ex-boyfriend and her friend's bratty sister have a knack for making everything, even the apocalypse, more unpleasant. When the two attract a threat as deadly as the undead to their safe haven, Cassie's forced to see how far she'll go to protect those she loves. And it's a lot farther than she'd anticipated.


One of the best books I've read this year! It was a random recommendation from Audible support. I read the blurb, thought it sounded interesting, so downloaded it and started listening to it not long after. It took me perhaps around 2 chapters to get thoroughly hooked and I didn't want to put it down again until the very last word was spoken. Almost certainly a book I'll eventually want for my physical library as well.

In some ways, it's definitely very similar to the Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant (but it's a book about zombies! It'd be hard for it not to be), but where Newsflesh takes place 15-20 years after the zombie outbreak, "Until the End of the World" IS the zombie outbreak. I found it absolutely fascinating - much the same way I do with most apocalyptic stories.

Peter and Anna infuriated me for much of the book, and I wanted Cassie (or somebody) to smack some sense into them, but at the end I was glad to see them come around, rather than have karma bite them. I really liked Cassie, John and Penny and absolutely loved Beth :-)

While we definitely didn't get all questions answered by the end of the book, I found it nicely contained, and am still making up my mind whether or not I want to continue with the next book in the series. If it's anything like Newsflesh, it'll still be awesome, but not as groundbreaking as the first one.