Reviews

I believe I was maybe not the best audience for this book, as I found it too slow-paced to my taste.

My understanding was, after reading the back cover, that a lot more events would occur but it took quite a long time to "start". An important part of the book is detailing the slowly darkening daily life of the family and the rising of an tyrannic government. We are following Eilish, the mother, and her attempts to keep on living a family life, despite events getting darker. It seemed quite long to me and maybe less eventful that I'd imagined. I had quite a bit of trouble keep me invested in the story.

The main theme is also a "It can happen anywhere ! What if it happened to us ?" relating to the wars and refugees. I understand the idea behind it but it seemed to me that it was brought as "Well, there is a national party rising, we do not like unionist. So now, life is bad" but it was not properly explained so it seems a bit hollow to me. I don't think mixing the current and terrifying facts of war and refugees to a "white country" makes it more relatable to the reader. Moreover, Ireland has its own history, for instance the Troubles, which could have been a great starting point to put in light the terror in living in an unstable country, the military and the rebels, the fight or flight instinct.

I believe some parts at the end were a bit too "cliché", as it was becoming less a story about a dystopian world but more about refugees.

It starts at the last quarter of the book and just goes from the staying in crowded basements to ending on crossing the sea.

It really ended the story on forcing the reader to "understand more" what the refugees are going through and it really did not work for me.

Sadly, even if the book is well-written, I believe it had potential but ended up more pushing an agenda than actually describing a surviving life in a dystopian world.