I featured Endling in my June 2025 new releases video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q31xhbo1tE, and though I have not read it yet, I am so excited to and expect 5 stars! I will update here when I post a follow up review or vlog.

I felt that while the premise was good and the themes relevant, the book felt somewhat disjointed internally. It's metafiction, but that wasn't an excuse for it not to be cohesive.

I usually don't get along well with meta fiction, however Maria Reva managed to find just the right balance to make it work. I really enjoyed the surreal repetition of certain scenes knowing that the neat and tidy ending is not the one that we are going to end up with.

Even with the fourth wall breakdown interjections, the characters all felt fully realized and in particular I think Yeva's relationship with Lefty the snail was beautifully done.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wowowowow. I haven’t read anything like this since maybe Anthony Doerr’s novel All the Light We Cannot See. The ability the author had to be so precise, ironic, honest, and earnest all at the same time? While the plot seemed absurd when I first read it, the follow through and execution was spectacular. Maria Reva did Ukraine proud in my very humble opinion.

I found my book love-match with this bizarrely wonderful novel by Ukrainian-Canadian Maria Reva. At first, I thought, WTF? Who is this snail-rescuing, RV-driving protagonist? But I was hooked early and wanted nothing more than to keep reading this wacky escapade. Reva manages to weave two very serious storylines (the mail-order bride industry and the Russian invasion of Ukraine) into a twisty, poignant, yet absurd plot. Sometimes, a book comes along that defies description, and this is one. Every time I begin trying to describe the plot to someone, I start laughing because it is, well, indescribable. How did Reva come up with this? And what will she come up with next? I'll be looking, that's for sure.
This book will be in my top few for the year, I can already declare. I'll be recommending it to all my book-loving friends. If you are on an around-the-world reading journey, this is an excellent pick for Ukraine.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me an electronic copy of the book in exchange for a review.

Yeva, Nastia, and Sol are who I yearn to know more about. I wish we were friends. Yeva who stands her ground ever after being laughed at and bullied by her family to settle down. Nastia and Sol trying their best to stay afloat, falling into the marriage industry and looking for their mother. After learning more about their history I felt that the story just fell into chaos, as it was devolving. I started to get confused, having a hard time to follow the story, what was really happening with the characters.

I have a feeling that it was the point of the book which was mentioned with one of the characters. Having the book feel more realistic and dramatic, instead of having a happy and peaceful ending. Even with its confusion I ate the book up, I could not stop reading and figure out what else they would get into. I love the writing and the characters way of thinking, I have such a need to read other works from this author.

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday books I received a ARC for an honest review !

Oftentimes as I’m reading, I’ll connect my current book to others I’ve read or authors it reminds me of in general. That was not the case with this book. Protagonist: suicidal snail biologist. Complication: the romance tourism industry. Setting: Russian occupation of Ukraine. It’s definitely one of a kind! Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the ARC!

Endling by Maria Reva is truly one of the most original books I have ever read.

Yeva lives in Ukraine, studying snails, and fending off her family's urgency for her to find a husband. Nastia and Solomiya are sisters whose mother has disappeared and they have a plan to try to find her. Meandering and complicated with a meta twist, Endling has a lot to say about a lot of things, especially mail order brides and the phenomenon of extinction. I'm not sure I fully tracked the whole thing but it was an original story nevertheless and I was left thinking about it long after I finished reading.

Apparently I am not a fan of metafiction. The author is talented and I appreciate what she was doing but not the type of book I care for.

Kind of struggling to put together my thoughts on this!! So much of any review here would be a spoiler so what I’ll say on the surface is that this book is fairly absurd in structure and has a lot going on. The author quite literally pokes fun at her own experience of writing this novel and will also make you question your own sanity in the process.

Endling by Maria Reva is a brilliantly sharp and unsettlingly timely novel—equal parts inventive, emotional, and impossible to put down. Reva’s bold blend of metafiction, absurdist humor, and political reality creates an unforgettable reading experience that is somehow both intimate and expansive. The plot unfolds with urgency and heart, exploring extinction, war, identity, and survival through characters that feel at once surreal and deeply real. It’s easier to absorb on the page than in audio, and I was completely captivated by Reva’s fearless storytelling and astonishing insight.

An unusual, engaging and thoughtful page turner of a novel about snails and Ukraine. That's simplistic and the novel is quite complex. This sees Yeva, who studies snails, take a job at a marriage bureau to fund her research. It's the same place Nastia and Solo have gone to work to keep themselves fed and in the hope of finding their mother. And it's the same place Pasha has gone to find a Ukrainian wife. Nastia and Solo persuade Yeva to go along with their unlikely plan to kidnap 12 bachelors but none of them fully understood that war, and the Russian army, are on the doorstep. This moves back and forth between their stories in Ukraine and Canada. And halfway through, well, it's not over. It's the finest of metafiction. It's funny, it's tragic, it's topical, and it will pull you in. Who knew you could get so attached a snail named Lefty? Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I've done a poor job of synopsis but know that this is a gem that I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend.

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

Endling by Maria Reva is a startling novel that examines extinction (of a species, of a life, of one’s hopes and dreams) and left me stricken with awe (at the author’s creativity and skill) and sadness (because it grew darker and more hopeless as it progressed.)

It begins as a quirky, literary, contemporary novel, set in Ukraine, that twines together three lives.

Yeva is a conservation scientist obsessed with snails and the rapidity of the rate of extinction of various species. She is a one-woman crusader, determined to save as many Ukrainian snail species as she can. Yeva owns a trailer fitted up as a mobile lab.The information provided about snails is honestly fascinating and surprisingly poignant.

Nastia and Sol are sisters. Nastia is very young and very beautiful. Sol is two years older and plain. They never knew their father and were abandoned by their mother who was a performative activist against the marriage business (matchmaking services that bring foreign bride-seeking men into Ukraine to find beautiful, young, docile mates.) It sounds a lot like legal human trafficking. Angered and despondent over their mother’s disappearance, the sisters have joined a marriage-brokering business in rebellion and to earn a living. Nastia poses as one of the “brides” and Sol follows as her translator.

Nastia has a plan to get their mother’s attention. She wants to abduct a group of the bride-seeking bachelors and briefly hold them hostage as a publicity stunt. If they make the bridal business appear dangerous, it might shut the practice down. Sol follows along. Nastia manages to persuade Yeva to join them so that they can use her trailer to contain the bachelors.

There are pitfalls aplenty, and yet, the plan seems to be working. They kidnap thirteen bachelors and set off. However, here the story screeches to a halt. The Russian invasion of Ukraine begins.

In a meta-twist, the author (a Ukrainian expat, living in Canada) now intrudes on the story. How can she continue writing this quirky tale given what is going on back in Ukraine?

When the author returns to the storyline, it incorporates this new reality. Events grow darker and quirky turns to surreal. The book barrels along to its ambiguous conclusion.

It’s a fascinating, heart-wrenching book, full of surprises, somewhat reminiscent of If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, which I also loved.

Thank you to Netgalley and Doubleday Books for this ARC!

This is my first time reading anything metafiction and it was quite the ride, to the point where I’m struggling to put together my thoughts on this book! Endling is a darkly funny, meandering trip through Ukraine on the eve of Russia’s invasion and the aftermath. Our main character is a scientist who will do anything, including faking her way through the Easter European bride industry, to support her mission to collect and breed nearly extinct snails.

I genuinely enjoyed this ride and particularly reading about our narrator’s search for snail species.

Rating: 3.75 rounded up

Let’s see…what is this book about? In no particular order, the study of the extinction of snails, the Ukranian “romantic tourism” industry, familial relationships, the emerging Russian invasion of Ukraine….and the author’s literary journey. Yeva hopes to find the mate for her snail, who is possibly the last of his kind. Natia and Sol hope to find their activist mother, who has been missing for months. Pasha dreams that by returning to the land of his birth he will meet the perfect woman and start a perfect life. And Maria (yes, the author)…well, she’s there too.

In this meta fiction environment, it becomes clear that all of our characters - including Lefty the snail - may be “endlings,” the last of their species. But the urge for survival is strong, and each character’s journey is about their will to survive. We’ve neglected to mention the most prominent potential endling in this story - Ukraine herself. Does Ukraine have the same will, strength and resourcefulness as the other characters? The end of that story isn’t written yet.

I’m not used to reading meta fiction, and the first time the author inserts herself into the narrative was a bit jarring. But I soon got used to the structure, recognizing that we are living in times when it is difficult to separate reality from fiction. Although it took me a while to engage, once I was hooked in, I couldn’t put the book down.

Many thanks to Doubleday and NetGalleynfor the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for my honest review. It was an adventure.

Maria Reva’s Endling—the gloriously unhinged story—is what happens when satire, Soviet absurdity, and postmodern existential dread throw a dinner party and forget to invite closure.

The title might suggest some quiet elegy about extinction. Spoiler: it’s not quiet. It’s an extinction rendered through Kafka’s filing cabinet, where the paperwork never ends and neither does the existential nausea. But then Reva, true to form, kicks the reader straight through the fourth wall. Yes, you. She knows you’re reading. The story points at its own architecture and says, “You see this mess? Welcome to it.”

And just when you think it can’t get darker, the real world barges in. Reva is Ukrainian-Canadian, and the shadow of Ukraine—its history, its violence, its current trauma—is thick in the margins. The absurdity is no longer just literary; it’s terrifyingly relevant. When whole cities can vanish under rubble or red tape, what’s one character slipping out of the text?

The brilliance of Endling is that it doesn’t let you get comfortable. It’s satirical, yes—but not safe. It's funny in the way a fever dream is funny, right before it turns into a scream. One moment you're chuckling at the deadpan delivery; the next you're contemplating the machinery of erasure, both in fiction and geopolitics. (And somewhere, the narrator is side-eyeing you for daring to feel anything.)

In short: Endling is the last laugh before the lights go out. Equal parts literary grenade and bureaucratic funhouse mirror. Highly recommended for readers who like their satire laced with dread and their metafiction served flaming.

I struggle to wrap up my thoughts on this book, which I can at least definitively say is unlike anything I have ever read before.

It’s metafiction surrounding the Ukrainian bride industry, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and…snails? The author interrupts the narrative to weave her own life experience around the story, which was my favorite part, truthfully!

The sorrow the author feels over Ukraine‘s invasion, the futility of carrying on while so much pain and destruction and loss is occurring elsewhere, was deeply relatable.

It’s playful, with memorable main characters, but it didn’t always blend perfectly for me. At times there was just a little too much happening, and I felt a bit disoriented. Unsure where to focus.

I would still recommend this, because I think it’s timely and completely unique!

Thank you Doubleday Books and the publicist for this arc.

It pains me to DNF this one as the snail aspect is charming and meaningful but that's what I'm going to do. I feel bad for not being able to keep going as I know the author is working with heavy (real life) stuff that is deeply personal but I'm just not in love with any of it other than the snails and there's far too little of him/them. Nastia is described as keeping her face blank and not emotionally engaging with any of the bachelors and that's unfortunately how I feel about most of these characters. They're all blank and emotionally closed off to me. Maybe this is a cultural failing for me in not being able to dig past the surface but it is what it is and I don't think reading any further - okay, I lie, I did flip to the end and still don't get it - will help. I truly wish the book luck.

Potentially the best book I’ve read in the first half of 2025! I was so drawn into the story of our two main characters and their different motivations for being involved in the “romance tours” but when the story switches up and the author is talking directly to us?! The acknowledgements page being smack dab in the middle of the book?! Obsessed. It really made me reflect on how we tell stories, how we take the world around us and mold it or fictionalize it simply to survive. The book was gut wrenching, especially as the war in Ukraine continues as I write this, but it was also funny and absurd! I wish I had more words to describe this book but really it is something that should be experienced and is especially important to read right now. I can’t wait to make all my friends read this when it comes out!

I’m not even sure how to talk about this book, because it’s like nothing else I’ve ever read. It’s about endangered Ukrainian snail species, a mobile mollusk conservation van, a romance tour agency, a missing mother, the Russian invasion, and somehow—somehow—it all works.

Yeva is one of the most memorable characters I’ve read in a long time. She’s so weird, so real, so full of quiet rage and deep, overwhelming care. She’s trying to save a species no one else gives a damn about, while her country is actively being invaded, and her inner monologue is just devastating. There’s a line early on: “Even Yeva was tired of Yeva.” I had to stop and stare at the page for a minute. It’s funny and tragic at the same time.

Also? The snail discourse in this book is next level. The way Reva uses them to skewer conservation politics, human apathy, and media attention is so sharp it’s almost absurd—but in a good way. (“Snails weren’t furry or cute. They weren’t interactive with humans. Snails weren’t pandas…”—I mean. Come on.)

There’s a turn the book takes—one I won’t spoil—that reframes the whole story in a way that made me stop and sit with it. It’s unexpected, but incredibly effective. And what it adds to the conversation about Ukraine, about representation, about how stories are told during wartime… I’m still thinking about it.

By the end I felt raw. Sad. Drained. But also full of love for these characters. It’s not just bleak—it’s also funny, strange, intimate, and hopeful. It captures the surreal day-to-day of living through war in a way that felt painfully honest. It doesn’t flatten anything. It holds both the horror and the resilience.

Just—read it. That’s all I’ve got. I’ll be thinking about Yeva and those damn snails for a long time. And Nastia. And Sol. And Pasha. Thank you to Doubleday for the free ebook to review.