#TheWriteReads #UltimateBlogTour Review: Things to Do Before the End of the World by Emily Barr

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Full of twists and suspense, this book is sure to keep you reading!

Thank you so much to The Write Reads, Penguin, and Emily Barr, for allowing me to be part of this experience and also providing me with a complimentary digital copy and media kit!

Purchase this book (affiliate link): Amazon

About the Author

I started out working as a journalist in London, but always hankered after a quiet room and a book to write. I managed, somehow, to get commissioned to go travelling for a year, and came home with the beginnings of a novel set in the world of backpackers in Asia. This became Backpack, a thriller which won the WH Smith New Talent Award, and I have since written eleven more novels for adults, one novella, and three book for Young Adults, published in the UK and around the world. I live in Cornwall with my husband Craig and our children.

Website: https://www.emilybarr.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/emily_barr

Review

Book CWs

For a list of warnings, tropes, and representation for this book, check out its page on BookTriggerWarnings.com.

Premise

A timely and powerful coming-of-age thriller from the bestselling author of The One Memory of Flora Banks.

What would you do when you hear the news that humans have done such damage to the earth that there might only be a limited amount of safe air left – a year’s worth at most?
You’d work through your bucket list, heal rifts, do everything you’ve never been brave enough to do before?

Olivia is struggling to do any of this. What it is she truly wants to do? Who do she wants to be?

Then out of the blue comes contact from a long-lost cousin Olivia didn’t even know existed. Natasha is everything Olivia wants to be and more. And as the girls meet up for a long, hot last summer, Olivia finds Natasha’s ease and self-confidence having an effect on her.

But Natasha definitely isn’t everything she first appears to be…

Review (No Spoilers)

TheWriteReads is getting me with all of these amazing blog tours!! I recently read and loved Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli for a tour of Dave’s and here comes another fabulous tour right after!

Before I get started, I want to give a fair warning–something many other bloggers stated in their reviews–that this isn’t your normal apocalypse thriller. The book does starts out with a newsflash that the atmosphere is going to become uninhabitable in less than a year due to human’s lack of care about their effect on the environment (sounds about right). But in a twist of events, humans have no idea what to do now that they’ve been confronted with their shortened life-span, so people kind of just decide to go about their lives exactly the same way as before, albeit with a few more risks, parties, and vacations thrown into the mix.

Rather than being a story about humanity falling apart at the end of the world, the plot instead focuses on a 17 year old girl, Olivia (Libby), who is desperate to break from her shell and truly live her life before she dies. She meets Natasha, a cousin she didn’t know existed, and takes off on a series of adventures that Natasha cooks up. As Libby gains more self-confidence, she begins to learn that her family tree is full of dark secrets. Why didn’t anyone tell her about her estranged cousin? What aren’t her parents telling her about their pasts? Is Natasha really as amazing as she seems to be?

While the book took a while to get started (the first 50% or so reads more like a contemporary than a thriller), the story continues with a second-half that kept me hooked and anxious to read more. I enjoyed the writing quite a lot (Barr embodied the teenage mind well), and somehow the plot managed to be both predictable and unpredictable at the same time. There are several plot points that are pretty obvious, yet Emily Barr kept throwing twists at me that I never even thought about.

Overall, I’m highly impressed with this book. I’ll admit that there were multiple aspects I didn’t like (unnecessary secrets, lack of parental authority, what I felt was a needless romance side story), but once I got to the end, I didn’t at all care. I was so caught up in how much I was enjoying the ride, that I completely forgot about any bumps I experienced along the way.

I’m definitely going to look into reading more Emily Barr books in the future! I’ve heard great things!

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