A review by sreddous
All That's Left in the World by Erik J. Brown
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
The writing style is lovely and also makes things easy to imagine -- it's a good balance of internal processing from the characters, and also description of the scenery and of other people and such. Characters like Henri are fun and made me think things like "haha, I wish I knew this person in real life!". The stakes are always high too; there's pretty-constant threats from other people and from nature, which made for a nice balance of different problems to solve and also definitely makes sense in an apocalyptic setting.
A few things kept me from being fully immersed most of the time. I think I personally didn't really click with Andrew. I think his sense of humor grated on me, and I also got tired of the pop culture references reeeeal fast. I think SOME pop culture references are realistic (I'd miss Mario Bros games and Sailor Moon if the apocalypse happened in real life) and there are some times when Jamie and Andrew bond over talking about movies as a 'shared hobby' that's nice (I guess I hate to admit I, a Jacksonville native, did indeed lovingly roll my eyes at the Good Place and the Blake Bortles references), but.... whew. There are a LLLLLLOT. of. pop culture. references. Cutting..... half? of them would make things fit better and would feel less "guess what else I can shoehorn in!", IMO.
The romance I think was mostly well-paced-enough, although I think some of the scenes where they actually opened up to each other about their feelings felt a bit rushed -- speaking generically to avoid spoilers as much as possible, the bad guys ....just didn't pay attention, they were just "Celebrating"? While Jamie and Andrew were talking about all these really important things? I don't think I believe that that would happen. It feels like the romantic reveal stuff, and Cara's involvement and her feelings, was all happening so late in the book that it just needed to be rushed through, and that's a shame.
Still, in general, this book does a good job showing a plot or character-building point early that then pays off later. I like how Jamie struggles to use the gun and how Andrew mulls over what it means to trust people. Tense, sad, hopeful stuff!
A few things kept me from being fully immersed most of the time. I think I personally didn't really click with Andrew. I think his sense of humor grated on me, and I also got tired of the pop culture references reeeeal fast. I think SOME pop culture references are realistic (I'd miss Mario Bros games and Sailor Moon if the apocalypse happened in real life) and there are some times when Jamie and Andrew bond over talking about movies as a 'shared hobby' that's nice (I guess I hate to admit I, a Jacksonville native, did indeed lovingly roll my eyes at the Good Place and the Blake Bortles references), but.... whew. There are a LLLLLLOT. of. pop culture. references. Cutting..... half? of them would make things fit better and would feel less "guess what else I can shoehorn in!", IMO.
The romance I think was mostly well-paced-enough, although I think some of the scenes where they actually opened up to each other about their feelings felt a bit rushed -- speaking generically to avoid spoilers as much as possible, the bad guys ....just didn't pay attention, they were just "Celebrating"? While Jamie and Andrew were talking about all these really important things? I don't think I believe that that would happen. It feels like the romantic reveal stuff, and Cara's involvement and her feelings, was all happening so late in the book that it just needed to be rushed through, and that's a shame.
Still, in general, this book does a good job showing a plot or character-building point early that then pays off later. I like how Jamie struggles to use the gun and how Andrew mulls over what it means to trust people. Tense, sad, hopeful stuff!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gun violence and Homophobia