A Beginning at the End

by Mike Chen

[shannonmiz]

You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight

I genuinely don't know how to do this book justice via review. It was my best book of 2019, and I straight up still think about it. Especially when the world seems bleak, and I wonder what will become of us, I can't help but wonder who I'd be in the face of the apocalypse.

And that's the truly brilliant part of this book: It feels like it could be you and yours at the end of days. The characters are so beyond relatable that I don't know how to probably explain it to you. They could be any of us. They're flawed yet decent and just trying to make it through. They don't always make the  best choices, but the reader always can sympathize with why they made their choices.

This leads us to another phenomenal thing about A Beginning at the End: the gray morality I so adore. In decisions both small and large, our characters have to navigate their new circumstances colliding with their existing belief systems. What they may have never expected to do in the Before, they're finding themselves doing After. Their responses, for better or worse, are so honest. We'd all make mistakes. We'd (mostly) all do good. And each of the characters, from the child to the adults, are struggling with figuring out who they're going to be in the new world.

And the final piece we need to talk about before I leave you to go buy this book immediately is that the world-building was the most eerily realistic post-apocalyptic setting I have ever read. Because the truth is, we all would crave the return to "normalcy" after the end. And that's what so many of these folks are after: what they've lost. But what is the cost? And can anything ever go back, or can we only move forward?

Bottom Line: I loved every minute of this book and you need to read it, that's all, just do the thing. I just want to start throwing it at people, it's perfect for just about everyone to read.