A review by grazanne
The End of the World Running Club by Adrian J. Walker

3.0

Yep another one! My husband read this after our trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. With my post-apocalyptic run, he suggested I read this.

Edgar Hill is a mediocre husband and father. He whittles his life away drinking and staying out too late. Until asteroids hit the northern hemisphere and his quick thinking saves his family of 4. He feels he will turn his life around and be a better family man. A few weeks later, discovered by what’s left of a military group, survivors are brought together with hopes of being rescued by another country that wasn’t devastated like England and Scotland.

But Ed is still struggling. Instead of staying with his family, he signs up for a dangerous mission to go into big towns to find supplies. While he is gone, those that stayed behind were “rescued”. He has 21 days to cross Scotland and England to make it to the boat that will be leaving for the southern hemisphere.

This is a character study, where you root for the unlikable underdog. There is a rag tag group that forms and decides, for various reasons, to run the 500 +\- miles to the south of the United Kingdom to try and join the rescue boats that are leaving in just under a month.

If you have ever run a marathon, picture running roughly one a day for three weeks, with lack of consistent food & shelter. Add on that a destroyed terrain and inhospitable people met along the way. Family is a powerful motivator. Ed learns how to run day-by-day, with the help of others. I enjoyed the passages that focused on running. This was a solid PA book.