I skipped this one because I'm just over dystopian fiction (I really am), but there was some arm twisting and I have to say I'm so glad I gave this a shot. I was hooked right away. It is unlike anything I've read before. I want to say it compares most closely to The Road, but light on the desperation. All of the characters were multi-layered and interesting. I really cared about these people. It all snaps together like a puzzle in the end, like a Mitchell novel. I was impressed. Station Eleven is a good read.

WARNING, this book's main plot is about a swine flu that killed off 99% of the world's population. If that is triggering for you, do not continue reading this review, as that plot point and what is happening now will be discussed.


This book, while written well and clearly showing how we are lucky that the only major issue most of us have had is cabin fever and lack of TP, didn't do it fully for me for two reasons.

1) The bad guy is a religious fanatic, specifically Christian. That is too easy of a stereotypical scapegoat and I'm tired of Christians being the bad guys, even if their beliefs are warped and clearly not Christian. Would have been easier to stomach had their been an equally "good" religious believer who was Christian. There wasn't and that bothered me. Minus one star.

2) It just ENDS. We get a glimpse of hope and the characters going towards it and then The End. No idea if the hope was real or just a mirage. I didn't read hundreds of pages for a Lady or the Tiger ending. Minus one more star.

3) Little things aren't right. An airport is a major setting in this novel and while it isn't clear if it is an international arrival airport or not, it has TSA agents, but CBP officers aren't mentioned. Ok, that's fine. But the TSA agents have TSA guns. The airport is in Michigan, USA. Not sure if other countries have agents who are called TSA who have guns, but American TSA agents, while uniformed, do not carry weapons. The CBP Officers do, but again, they were not mentioned at all. Small detail, but one Google search brought up the "no weapon carrying by TSA". Not enough to deduct a star, but it irked me.

The writing was lyrical in my opinion, but the MC's not remembering a whole year, not remembering much about electricity, etc from age eight did bother me, even though my memory of being eight is rather spotty and I haven't gone through the trauma of the world ending, so it makes sense that she can't remember, but it was a trait that bothered me.

Another reviewer mentioned that names of many of the secondary characters weren't used, just the role or instrument they played, which made them seem further from the reader and less personal. There was a distance between the reader and the characters in the book.

I did appreciate that what killed off like 99% of the population was a swine flu, so it does bring into perspective that we don't have it half as bad as it could be. However, I HIGHLY doubt that a swine flu that incubated and killed THAT quickly would reach the epic proportions it did with NONE of the MCs being aware of it.

Also, I am no epidemiologist, but from what I understand, VERY few diseases are 100% lethal or incubate and kill that quickly. To have one that deadly that quickly is highly unlikely. Not to mention that if a disease is 100% deadly, it runs out of hosts quickly and it tends to evolve to not be as deadly, so it won't die too. Diseases go through multiple generations much quicker than humans do, so while it might be that deadly at first, once it has gone through a few generations, it will tend to get less deadly.

Again, I am not an expert by any means, but my main interest when I was younger was infectious diseases, read as much about disease as I could, took some really interesting college courses on the topic, so I know a little.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, of course.

Also, I am not demeaning what we are going through and yes, many people have died from it and I am wearing a mask and using hand sanitizer and wearing gloves in public. I am doing what I can to not possibly spread the disease and I am staying home when I don't need to go out. People I know have gotten it and some have died, so I am not trying to be flip about what we are going through right now. I'm just pointing out that it is not as bad as what happened in this book. I'm trying to have some perspective, which I feel this book did give me.

We have had customers coming into the store for "end of the world" books and while I had recommended this book, it was while saying I hadn't read it yet. I am glad that I have read it now and I will still continue to recommend this book to customers in the store. I think the comparison of what happened in this book to what is happening now might help others as it helped me. The writing is very descriptive and lush and the characters that are developed do grow on you, though the secondary characters aren't fully fleshed out.

3, solid but not as good as I had hoped, stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.