Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam.

What kind of descent into madness did I just fall into??

This is an exquisitely written, slow moving story of when a family of four escapes the noise of the city for the quiet of a cabin. It is only after a very short time there that the owners of the cabin arrive late one evening, unannounced. They were driving by, and after a sign of danger, felt like stopping and staying on their property was the safest option. But they don't know each other, and does ownership of the property allow them to invade their space and vacation like this.

I will give no more away but to say that I never saw any of this coming. The story was surprising, but also, the writing! I was constantly moved at the beauty Alam was able to weave with language, even if it meant that I had to look up definitions...a lot.

WOW. This was so unsettling to read during these pandemic times. This is like a COVID-type book except that it is about a completely different disaster which may lead to the end of life as we know it. This was terrifying and jolting as we have all learned how it feels to just try and stay safe and healthy with those we love in these times of terrible uncertainty. The writing was intense and challenging and I found it to be an absolute page-turner.

The book starts like a sunny happy beach read. An affluent white couple rents an Air BnB for a nice vacation with their two teenagers. There is no cell phone service so when something big happens, they are no aware until the owners of the property- a black couple- show up unexpectedly. At the risk of spoiling, I don't want to reveal more details, but i will conclude by saying this book is a unique examination of race and class and family and what the world looks like when it’s ending—which is creepily similar to the world we are in now. It was just fantastic and I even found myself pacing during some parts. I am still thinking about this. I guess I'm glad I read this at this exact moment in time. I think it gave it a whole different feel than if I had read it a year ago. Thank you for the approval. I will read this author again.

This is a book that meets our apocalyptic moment, this catastrophic era of unraveling we're all living through; a book that feels expressly of that era; a book whose escalating sense of dread perfectly encapsulates the psyche of the present; a book that fulfills its premise so skillfully and subtly that a careless reader might miss its full impact, all the little clues and asides that add up to something brilliant and shattering; a book that will haunt me in many of the same ways that Station Eleven haunts me; a book that will be read decades from now as an example of great literature of the Trump period.

This is a slow burn of a read. Deceptively easy going at the beginning, it starts to close in on the reader and change from what one could call a summer beach read to an apocalyptic novel, examining how we react as the world mysteriously falls apart around us.

This novel about six people who are isolated together as a cataclysmic event occurs at some distance from a vacation home in Long Island. A family of four has rented the home, but the owners of the home retreat because the power goes out in the city. As the families uneasily co-exist, the world around them reacts to the event. There is an exploration of wealth inequality, race, and the inevitability of death. There is a palpable feeling of unease and the uncanny, and each character has their own specific reaction. Rumaan Alam's ability to observe human behavior and turn over the rocks where people hide their feelings and motivations is astute. What starts off seeming like satire soon pares down into a serious novel about the ends of the earth. Highly recommended to people who don't mind reading about human emergencies during our own pandemic reality.

I could not believe how fast this book grabbed my attention, and held it all the way through - no exaggeration to say I finished it in one sitting. Reminiscent of Parasite in the way it deals with issues of class and money in the intimate setting of a lovely home. I loved the way the author was able to get into the minds of each character, so the reader is able to understand the motivations of each person and explore what they know and what they don't. I kind of wish that I knew more about what exactly was happening in the outside world, but at the same time, that unknowing is so critical to the suspense and is also totally immaterial to the story itself - regardless of what is going on in the world, what is going on right in front of you is really more important. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time to come. Thanks to the publisher for a NetGalley.

Clay and Amanda and their children Archie and Rose are leaving Brooklyn, headed to their rental home on Long Island for a much-needed vacation. The cell phone service is spotty and their GPS stops working, but they are prepared with written directions. They have rented a beautiful house, secluded in the woods with seemingly no neighbors for miles.
They enjoy the quiet, the pool, and a day trip to the ocean, the adults satiated and the children slightly bored. It is only their second night, but it looks like it will be a successful trip. Then there is a knock at the door, and Amanda is fearful knowing they are truly alone in this house. It could be robbers, rapists, or murderers, but Clay opens the door believing someone is lost or in trouble.
An elderly couple, G.H, and Ruth are standing on the doorstep. They state that they are the owners of this house and a blackout in the city caused them to flee to the safety of their second home. Should Clay and Amanda trust what they say? Could they be lying about the blackout and their claim to the house?
This may seem like the strangest thing that will happen to this family, but things are about to get much worse. Partial emergency broadcast notifications before the cable goes out, a deal landline, strange animal behavior, and an unbearable noise are just a few of the things they will have to navigate.
Two families from two different worlds, separated by race and class and preconceived notions will have to decide who they were, who they are now, and how to handle the growing sense of unease and isolation. It wasn't the easiest read and making sense of the situation left me without all the answers I wanted. But it kept me flipping pages, trying to pick up clues, and desperately trying to figure out this odd, perhaps apocalyptic nightmare. I didn't love the ending but I enjoyed the journey.
Once again, Buzz Books 2020 Fall/Winter edition lead me to another great read.

Whoa! What's going on in Rumaan Alam's world anyway?
Compelling, creepy, scary as all hell, but all in a manner that keeps you reading till the end. And then you'll think about it for a very long time.

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

Hang on to your seats, especially if you are reading this during our present pandemic. Alam has a winner here in this apocalyptic novel of two families caught in its onslaught.

I generally read two to three books at a time, and I kept putting the others down to go back to this one. The author has this uncanny ability to not only drag the reader in, but to add insight to future events of the story, as it goes, that the characters cannot see or predict. I loved that!!

Central to the tale are two New York couples and the one couple’s two teenage children. Unusual circumstances brought them together and necessity made them companions, if not friends. The dialog is spot on, the story grows more eerie as it goes and is very well written. Five stars from this reviewer for a fabulous story!

My sincere thanks to #HarperCollins and #NetGalley for an ARC for my review.

This deeply human, near-apocalyptic novel by Rumaan Alam is one of those strange novels that manages to be extremely compelling but is not written at a break-neck pace. How do you react when tragedy strikes? How do you react when you are mildly inconvenienced? Can you just pretend to be a good person until you are? These deep, introspective questions are explored through the eyes of two families struggling to understand what is happening as the world around them falls silent. Humor and pathos walk hand-in-hand, as Rumaan looks at his characters with compassion while they go through trial after trial - some small, and some overwhelming large.

A fast read that will make you smile and leave you a little disturbed. Not to be missed!

Oh noooo!!!! This is smart, thrilling, riveting suspense and family drama but it’s not a great choice to read it during your quarantine and chill times because it’s claustrophobic, dark, suffocating, apocalyptic story.

Something going on outside and you gotta stay in your house to save yourself but maybe sometimes taking risk and leave the world behind, getting out of your shelter to see the things with your own eyes would be the best alternative!

The story terribly reminded me Jordan Peele’s “Us’: Family with two kids renting a vacation home and but another family appears at the door. Thankfully they are not their evil twins to come for replacing them like Us’ plot-line. This story is mostly psychology suspense, it is not a horror story!
It starts Amanda and Clay- a lovely couple wants to escape from their city life and rents a vacation home at the Hamptons for reasonable price as weekend getaway with their two kids. Everything starts quite relaxing, entertaining, peaceful like the silence before the storm or happiness before the approaching disaster as like all those thriller movies’ beginning.

Suddenly they hear the banging on the door and meet with G.H. and Ruth, house’s real owners escaped from NY because of blackout and came to their second home to use their shelter. The internet, television, cell service are shut down as a proof of their story. So they let them in. Of course the thought balloons start to appear above your head: are these people really the real owner of the house? What the hell is happening outside? Is this the apocalypse? How long to families need to stay together and do they trust each other? Should they do that?

High tension, family drama, class-race differences mixed with uncertainty of their situation and growing claustrophobia and feeling trapped in one location.

I could really give this book 5 stars because of great plot-line. But the perplexing language style, complex vocabulary choices and the way of story-telling were a little exhausting and complex for me. It broke my concentration at few times. Ending was okay but it could be more surprising and shocking. Those facts lowered my points to 3.5 but I still rounded them up to 4 because the promising premise and high tension story-building were delightful. It was still exciting, heart throbbing page-turner.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishers/Ecco for sharing this ARC with me in exchange my honest review.

Wow! This book was so hard to put down! I’m honestly still a little upset that I reached the end and realized that there isn’t any more. I would have gladly read 100 or 200 pages more to find out what happens next. ⁣
Clay, Amanda, and their 2 teenage children book an Air BnB in the country for an much-needed vacation. All is well until there is a knock at the door in the middle of the night. Behind it is an elderly couple, the Washington’s, who claim they are the owners of the home, and they are seeking refuge from a citywide blackout in New York City. Clay and Amanda are unsure at first of the couple’s true intentions, and of their claims of disaster. But as certain strange events begin to plague the family, they start to wonder if there is any truth to the Washington’s claims. ⁣
I loved the author’s writing, from her detailed character descriptions to hinting at the horrors lurking behind the scenes. I felt like I was eavesdropping on conversations; each of the characters and their actions felt real. I could see myself acting like Amanda at times, for example. I shivered with anticipation each time a strange event occurred or was mentioned, and imagined it happening in real time and how I would react. ⁣
This is certainly an eerily timely book, what with the events of the world happening and how some are choosing to react to it. Do you prepare, or do you carry on as normal? What makes this book heightened in tension is not only the not knowing the true cause of the events outside, but the loss of the access to 24/7 news and information, and how both families choose to forge ahead with little information, each one believing they are in the right. It proposes a great discussion point: if you were in the same situation, would you choose to stay and wait it out, or would you leave and seek help elsewhere?

Something about Rumaan Alam’s writing style doesn’t jive with me - I felt the same with That Kind of Mother. Gave it a try though!

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

Archie was fifteen. He wore misshapen sneakers the size of bread loaves. There was a scent of milk about him, as there was to young babies, and beneath that, sweat and hormone. To mitigate all this Archie sprayed a chemical into the thatch under his arms, a smell unlike any in nature, a focus group’s consensus of the masculine ideal.

Thank you to Netgalley as well as the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was only able to get about 60 pages into this book and I struggled just to get that far so I was unable to finish it.

I was initially drawn to Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind by its unique premise. While vacationing in a rented home far more luxurious than their NYC apartment, a family encounters some unexpected guests late one night - the owners of the rental. They show up on the doorstep claiming that a blackout has struck the city and that they have retreated to their second home as a safety measure. What to believe? Should the vacationing couple trust these strangers? And is there really a disaster happening in New York City?

Lately, I have been rating books as five star reads if they capture my attention and keep drawing me back into the book, making me think about it even when I am not reading. Leave the World Behind is one such book. In this time of COVID-19 and Stay-at-Home orders, a book featuring the fun and warmth of a vacation in a beautiful, peaceful place is just what I needed. What is ironic is this story quickly turns into a book that is eerily similar to current events. This novel begs the question, do you shelter in place while on vacation when trouble comes knocking at your door or do you "leave the world behind?"

Leave the World Behind is a highly descriptive and engaging novel, which made it a really enjoyable read for me. I literally felt like I was on vacation with this family, taking in the sights and sounds, savoring delicious meals, and enjoying the ambiance of a beautiful vacation home. The book got even better when the Washingtons, the owners of the home, showed up on the doorstep, taking this novel from a light-hearted, fun read into something much more dark and sinister.

Recommended for a variety of readers, but especially those who love getting lost in what they are reading.

Leave the World Behind is a suspenseful, highly readable novel that takes place doing a black-out. A family from the city is renting a vacation home near the Hamptons when the owners got up late at night telling the family renting, there's a black-out in the city can they stay.. While it does not take place during the pandemic going on today, it's highly comparable and relatable. The writing is chrisp and the book is hard to put down. The characters are both likable and relatable. Will they be okay and what is going on in the world. Not sure if this is a spoiler, but I couldn't figure out why they never turned on the car radio..

Surprising, engaging, and frightening - a book about crisis well suited for our current times.

Each time I thought I knew where this book was going, it took another turn. I ended up reading it all in one sitting, but I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for a long time.

We begin with Amanda, Clay, and their two kids heading out to an isolated vacation home. With the night come two visitors - G.H. and Ruth, the house's owners, bearing news of an East Coast blackout. But there's no Internet or cell service to confirm their story - so they will just have to trust each other.

What follows is a character study of these individuals - how they interact and how they deal with the world around them, which suddenly looks very different than what they are used to. I recognized a lot of the emotions from COVID-19 quarantine in these people - selfishness mixed with understanding, despair and shock yielding to resolve. Alam draws his characters across race, class, and age lines, creating conflict and drama that bubble up throughout the pages.

I quite enjoyed the writing here as well - there's a good level of poetic description without veering into overwriting. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy family drama and suspense.

Thank you to Ecco/HarperCollins for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I read this novel during quarantine for Covid-19, and while this book is not about a pandemic and quarantine, I found the storyline and the thoughts presented to be remarkably relevant to our current situation. Truly a novel that makes you think and that will stick with you.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50358031

A family a summer vacation a lovely rental a wonderful family vacation.Barbecues the beach great family time.Then a knock on the door late at night.The husband answers it’s a couple they claim it’s their home they have a place in Manhattan but something happened that night they had to escape the city so they drove to their home knowing it was rented but they were desperate.
So this page turner a book that kept me up late takes off.A book with shocks surprises highly recommend.#netgalley#harpercollins