Thanks to the author, publisher and Love Books Tours for the digital copy of this book in return for my honest review.

Here’s the blurb: The fight for survival has begun. All-out war spins out of control, and it doesn’t discriminate. Governments fall, continents are obliterated, deadly viruses consume everything in their path, and what’s left of humanity is on the run. Caught in this global refugee crisis are a few unlikely survivors.  Tony, a philandering London lawyer, escapes the doomed city and his own murky past as he evacuates to the continent. A hapless flock of Belgian nuns prays for a miracle as they watch their city turn to rubble.  Bella, a naïve teenager, thinks she is going on holiday when her father drags her across the globe to New Zealand.  Reggie, a loyal employee of a mining corporation, guards a hoard of diamonds in the African plains, fending off desperate looters.  Alyosha, a nuclear scientist, has been looking for the God-particle in Siberia, but now the world is at an end, he wishes to return home to Chernobyl.  A pair of orphaned children are cowering in the Tatra Mountains, fearing the sky will fall in on them.  Will they find an escape route before it is too late? Or are they doomed to fail?

Here’s my review: I don’t read a lot of dystopian fiction but what struck me in Anna Legat’s novel is that I felt the scenario could actually happen, which heightened the tension for me. I don’t know the ins and outs of the nuclear physics and warfare involved but I was uncomfortably immersed in the storyline, particularly as at the time of reading it there were media stories relating to nuclear weapons.

I thought the characters were well constructed and I liked the way several storylines intertwined as the novel progressed. There were some lovely moments of those lived and lost being found again, but also some poignant moments where the opposite was true.

I’ll be interested to read more about the characters and how they survive in the broken world. I’m giving this 3.5 stars.