The Never-Ending End of the World by Ann Christy
Released: August 8, 2023 | Genre: Science Fiction, Post Apocalyptic
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Coco Wells hasn’t seen another living person since she was a teenager. All of Manhattan is reliving the same few seconds, minutes, or hours on a loop… and they have been for years. Everything looks normal from a distance, but up close it’s a nightmare.
Coco is a survivor. She scavenges for food, reads, and—most importantly—avoids loopers. They ignore her, but only as long as she’s silent. She’s learned the painful lesson that a broken loop can mean death.
After eight years of solitude, learning to survive and precisely timing the loops that weave around the city, Coco wonders what lies beyond New York and what has become of the rest of the world.
As she leaves home for the first time, one question haunts her above all:
“Am I the only one left?”
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Ann Christy is that Christy wrote the entire first draft, more than 110,000 words, in just 24 days as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
REVIEW
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ☆
Something about it I don’t like, yet better than expected. 🤔🤩
I ended up really enjoying this book. It’s solid overall, with strong emotional beats and an original approach, but it does have one glaring issue: Forrest, the main character who, frankly, serves no real purpose.
Sure, you could argue that Forrest’s contributed by fathering Coco’s child, Joey. But even that feels irrelevant once you see how the paternal situation unfolds (I’ll avoid spoilers here). Honestly, Jorge could’ve easily filled that role, and it might have even made the story more compelling by introducing a true father-son dynamic. As it stands, Forrest feels like a placeholder: present but ultimately inconsequential.
That said, I’ll admit I went in with low expectations. With Coco being 17 at the start, I braced myself for yet another clichéd YA dystopian drama. But then… it wasn’t.
Instead, the story turned out to be raw and isolating, then unexpectedly thoughtful and deeply emotional. It spans an entire lifetime, evolving in tone and depth as the characters grow and the world shifts around them. The ending did get a bit confusing, but it didn’t take away from how absolutely devastating it was, especially when paired with the haunting idea of the entire world waking up to something entirely unfamiliar.
