An interesting premise that doesn't fully live up to its potential. Another entry in the slow apocalypse end of the world genre, it had a chance to be truly unique with its setting. Unfortunately it didn't take advantage of the zoo, and there was really no effort made to flesh out the world. If the story is shifting back and forth in time anyway (BTW UGH), I wish there'd been some lore about why Alcatraz was chosen for a zoo, how that worked, the animals inhabiting it (just going by the text it seemed like there were maybe ten kinds of animals on the island... you say it's one of the last zoos in the world but there's no sense of presence.)

Last zoo in the world..set in a dystopian era? Yeah sign me up, this sounded interesting!

when I started the book I was excited to see how the world would be mapped out.. but there wasn’t any real world building. Everything felt so grey… and for dystopian I feel like we NEED the world building. It all felt very muddled.

I liked Camille and Sailor, but I felt like I couldn’t really FEEL them being friends. Totally thought they were going to be lovers, so that’s a bit of a bummer. Their friendship just felt surface level. The whole book really felt surface level to me.

There were some plot lines that could have been flushed out so well, but it’s like we got a little glimpse and then… nothing.

I did like the ending.

Thank you to FlatIron for the physical arc and Macmillan audio for the ALC!