Devastating and brutal—horror that makes me cry is always my favourite. The twist on the home invasion subgenre is interesting, and pairing it with apocalyptic threats and questions of faith makes for a tenser read in which I was more emotionally invested. Utilitarian premises are cruel—there is a smugness and matter-of-factness to them that masquerades as selflessness that is especially and purposefully hurtful and meant to make you, who is presented with a false choice, feel irrational even though the idea itself is irrational. I really appreciated that the characters rejected it, questioned it, defied it, fought against the idea itself to the best of their ability.

The book is freakishly prescient, not just because there was apparently an earthquake and a tsunami warning shortly after the book was sent for advance reviews (freaky if you've read the novel), but because of the pandemic that started two years after it was published. While I think it's too easy to relate every end of the world narrative to the pandemic, the questions this novel asks are things we have gone through and that some of us are still going through (it's exhausting to still take covid seriously when most people around you are downplaying it or even pretending it's no longer a threat—I am writing this on a full flight in which I am one of about five people that are wearing a mask). It was an oddly comforting read—the way the saddest things are, at least to me—and it made me feel less irrational in the choices that I make and the beliefs I hold.