Was not a fan, the plot seemed interesting but the characters, story, etc were not interesting to me and it as wayyy more religious then I expected. I blame myself for not realizing it was young adult before I requested it on NetGalley.

Thanks for the arc I received.

In "The End" by Mats Strandberg, a comet is hurtling towards Earth and humanity knows the exact date of their demise. The story follows a group of teenagers, including Simon and Lucinda, as they face the end of the world. When Tilda, Lucinda's former best friend, is found dead and Simon is accused of her murder, they must navigate their own mortality and what truly matters in life. Strandberg's writing is powerful and suspenseful, exploring themes of survival, friendship, and love. Overall, "The End" is a poignant and impactful young adult novel that will leave readers pondering how they would spend their last days.

Thank you so much to net galley and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book. I fell in love with the story and characters in this book and I cannot wait to read more by this author!

I loved the combination of a murder mystery and eventual destruction! These characters made you wonder how the story would end and if they would all die. This book definitely kept you on your toes!

Wow this is terrible. Like… really terrible. The plot, the characters, the contrivances, it’s all simply horrible. No wonder I never saw this published…

If this wasn't YA it wouldn't have worked. The questions really hit home and the panic felt real. It is almost heart warming in a way

I thought this book was going to be a tough read, because it was about two characters who are experiencing their final couple of weeks on earth. The murder mystery part of the book kind of took me out of the whole 'the world is about to end' moment and I think I liked that. The last chapter felt incredibly sad and depressing and honestly I wish I never have to experience what these characters went through (both the fact the world is ending and the fact their friend was murdered). I liked the writing though I did notice sometimes it was translated, some sentences looked a bit odd in English, but overall I think it's a really good translation! The main reason I didn't rate this higher than a 3.5, was because I just didn't really like either of the main characters. I didn't really feel anything for them as I probably should have.

Sometimes I read something that pushes at the boundaries of my comfort zone. The End is one of those books as it is YA, translated from Swedish, and sci-fi. These qualities are found in a minimum of the books I usually read. This novel explores the questions of what one would do if they knew that the world was ending on a specific date & what tensions would arise between you and your loved ones as a result?

I loved the Engelsfors trilogy (The Circle, Fire, The Key) and I love dystopian books so I had really high hopes for this one. And I do think the book was interesting, but I definitely didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped to. I appreciated that the end of the world was final: the author didn't go down the road where humans manage to fix everything at the last second and that the apocalypse wasn't just a false alarm. But I also thought that some themes/existential questions could have been explored deeper and with more nuance, because it seemed like the ending of the book gave a quite unanimous answer.

This story reminded me of the movie I loved called Deep Impact. In that movie there was a similar plot only the world was going to end because a giant asteroid known as a global killer was coming soon. The movie had a similar plot to the action/disaster movie Armageddon but wasn't promoted as much.

The reason I loved the movie Deep Impact more than Armageddon is the same reason I loved this book. The plot focuses not on the disaster itself but on the people that are being affected by it. Lots of times people think they have all the time in the world, others know they have a limited time they just don't know the exact date.

In the case of these plots everyone knows when they're going to die and it will be the same day. So this book makes you think what would you do if you were in this situation.

Personally I would visit as many places here in the US I haven't seen like the Grand Canyon and the Pacific Ocean. I would stop by and pick up my cousins Matt and Mike and my friend CK that I haven't seen in years and have them road trip with me. I would spend my last days with them making up for as much lost time as possible.

I should do that asap anyway.

A comet is heading towards earth and the story is told from the teenagers perspective of living out their final days on earth gives you YA pre apocalyptic dystopian genre.
When one of thier friends is murdered you get a murder mystery plot during a time where the world is ending. It's a book about pending doom and what people do when the world is on a timer with no chance of survival.

The End
By Mats Strandberg

If you knew when your last day on earth would be, as a meteor is getting ready to crash towards Earth, how would you spend those last days?

This is a riveting and immersive pre-apocalyptical dystopian sci-fi young adult read that I found to be entertaining and surprisingly addictive. With a murder mystery thrown in to the impending doom, this was a deftly written dystopian and translated from The Swedish by Judith Kiros.

Realistic, relatable and raw, this is a book I highly recommend.

What would you do if you knew when the world was going to end? That’s exactly what happens when it’s announced that Foxworth, a massive meteor, is headed straight for Earth – and now it’s only a few weeks away.

The End is told from the perspective of two teens: Simon, a 17-year-old whose whole world just came crumbling down, literally, and Lucinda, a cancer patient, who suddenly feels less isolated with the entire world now staring down their own mortality in the same way she has had to for years.

And, if things couldn’t get any more screwed up, Tilda – Simon’s ex-girlfriend and Lucinda’s ex-best friend – is found dead and presumed murdered. But with the apocalypse looming, no one is too concerned about finding her killer. Except for Simon and Lucinda that is.

The End is the first Sci Fi book I’ve read in a while. But, it isn’t your typical YA apocalyptic novel. Though, with a premise that immediately grabs your attention and makes you sit up like the one-two-punch of both an imminent meteor crash and a murder mystery rolled up into one, that may not come as a surprise.

Nevertheless, Strandberg manages to cram in more than just a few unexpected plot twists into this novel’s pages. The End provides surprising nuisance and a thoughtful, emotionally-driven discussion about human nature and what it does when faced with the reality of the end of the world.

My only critiques were that I did find some of the twists a tad predictable and the plot slow to start. But after one of the biggest plot points took place, I felt as though the novel really picked up the pace and became a lot more engaging! There’s really so many different elements to this story, that even if one aspect that doesn’t resonate very strongly with you, there are others that likely will.

Thank you to the publisher, Arctis Books, and NetGalley for providing me an e-ARC of this book. All thoughts are my own.

Told from the alternating viewpoints of two Swedish high schoolers writing journal entries in a cloud-based diary that will hopefully be found in future centuries, it captures the weeks and then the countdown days leading up to a massive comet approaching the Earth and about to decimate it. The End galvanized my attention throughout an intense read. As an avid reader of apocalyptic fiction, an advanced reader’s copy of The End from the publisher proved impossible to resist. Turns out it’s brilliantly absorbing, filled with memorable characterizations, and uplifting despite its intense doomsday focus. It really makes you think about what you would do, how you would feel, and how you would reconcile the meaning of your life, if you knew the specific date of your death. From those joining hippie, artist communes to those finding religious fervor to those getting lost in the haze of drugs to the deniers and to the gather-all-your-loved-ones-close, people’s reactions and the mayhem that ensues challenges your own beliefs and anxieties. And the ending, while foretold, just floored me when it came. While pitched as young adult, this moving read is great for adults as well.

What a tale! YA has some of the better books lately and this one up at the top. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher!

First of all, thanks to NetGalley and Arctis for approving my request and sending me an eARC in exchange for a honest review.
You have to know English isn’t my first language, so feel free to correct me if I make some mistakes while writing this review.


Imagine knowing the precise day you'll die - not because a fortune teller tells you, but because science tells you with so much evidence.
Imagine knowing the precise day you'll die - not just you, but everyone you love and know, all the people you have never seen and met in your life. In which all of humanity - and the world itself - will cease to exist.

This is the news that catches Simon by surprise one day in May, almost at the end of the school year and with the air already smelling of summer: a meteorite - renamed Foxworth after the scientist who discovered it - is about to crash into the Earth and all humanity will die on September 16th. There's no film like "Armageddon" that offers realistic solutions, there's nothing that science and technology can do because it's now too late to do anything and you can only resign yourself to the idea of ​​death, enjoying as you can the time that remains.

Flash-forward to a month till the end of everything and summer is winding down: his two mothers, Judette and Stina, have forgotten about their divorce and have returned to live together to keep the family united, but Simon has spent the last few months at a party after party drinking cheap alcohol and trying to win back Tilda, who dumped him after the Foxworth news and is now a totally unrecognizable person to him, spending her time between drugs and casual sex.
This is how Simon attempts to stifle the panic that threatens to suffocate him when he thinks of the imminent death that awaits them, as Sweden - and the rest of the world with her - falls apart: money is worth nothing, school is no longer in effect even though September has begun, people hardly go to work anymore and the end of the football championship seems the most important work to be completed before everything is over - and the square and the streets become some of the most violent places where people let go of all the anger, depression and negative feelings with which they cannot deal with, turning them into physical violence towards anyone who comes within range.

Simon only wants one thing: to have Tilda back by his side.
But then one day Tilda is found dead and the suspicions all fall on him because he was the one obsessed with her, he was the one who had been dumped, he was the one who wanted her back, he was the one who was jealous of the other guys Tilda had sex with.

The only other person who knew Tilda as well as he was Lucinda, her ex-best friend. And that's a bad thing to say, but Lucinda is almost relieved that the world is ending because, after losing nearly a year of her life to cancer, she will no longer be the only one with no future ahead of her - she is also almost relieved that cancer will not kill her slowly, but that it will end up for everyone in the same way and at the same time.
The news of Tilda's death is a shock and the remorse for having pushed her away and not having spoken to her again - for not having been able to say goodbye to her at least one last time - is what drives her to fight against fatigue and pain to find who killed her. Simon swears he didn't do it and Lucinda would also be inclined to believe him, given what Tilda told her before they fell out of friendship and from her early school memories of him, but she needs proof to be sure.
And this - and all the rest of her life - she writes it on an app called "TellUs", which almost the whole world is using to send stories and traces of their lives to a satellite to prove that humanity at some point existed - because you never know who else could exist in the universe and who could one day find these stories.

But even if they find the killer, what would be the consequences in a world where there are no more trials and which is about to end?


It's a book that initially reminded me a lot of the TV show called "Salvation".
It's also a book that made me tremendously anxious at the idea of ​​something totally out of our control that could kill us all at once - it's true that death in general is beyond our control, but to me knowing that there's an expiration date is even more distressing.

The search for Tilda's killer takes place in this book, but in a less amount of pages than one might think because it's a very introspective book that makes the readers think about everything - in the book and in their lives.

Through the eyes of Simon and Lucinda, through the things they do and see, we see how humanity reacts to the news as the countdown ticks: there are those who continue to carry out their routine as usual, those who lock themselves up at home with their family, those who stun themselves with parties and alcohol and drugs and video-games to avoid looking out the window, those who become religious fanatics and those who deny till the last second that Foxworth exists. And it makes the reader anxious not only because of the meteorite between the pages, but because the situations described - the violence, the anguish, the depression, the panic, the denial, the altruism almost to the point of obliteration - all too much resemble situations and attitudes that, albeit to a lesser extent, we too live in this time of global pandemic.
This is also why it took me a long time to read it, because I often didn't have the stomach to continue.

I liked it so much how it was not a problem that Simon has two mothers - one of whom is from Dominica - and that he is of mixed race, how he was accepted in all calm in the place where they live and it should always be so, one should not be surprised when homophobia is totally absent in a book - even if it's not lacking in the characters' family past. Simon, however, always quite shy and insecure, finds himself adrift following the end of his relationship with Tilda and her subsequent death - his friends are no longer such and he suspects that it was Tilda's popularity that attracted them and some social media comments even point to the color of his skin when accusing him of murder.

Lucinda has always been a bit in Tilda's shadow, but she never wanted to have the spotlight on her because of her cancer. She has a hard time relating to people and going out into the outside world, but she makes an effort to find out who killed Tilda. We see the most human aspect of Lucinda, but we also hear the sarcastic voice that she hides underneath the appearance - we feel her honesty in admitting the relief of the collective end, in not having to give a sorrow to her father because in this way he doesn't have to bury her as he did with his wife who died of the same cancer, we see how reassuring she is towards her frightened little sister Miranda that she's looking for answers on what happens after death.

I liked "The End" very much - it's perhaps just the hint of instalove that makes me turn up my nose, but in the end I also understand it given the lack of time to live the feelings and develop them a little at a time, wanting to live them to the fullest in the time that remains.

It's a very human novel - just as Tilda was: fragile, but strong and whose aspirations for perfection to meet everyone's expectations then led her to a breakdown during which she allowed herself to finally be herself - which also moved me in multiple places, especially with Simon's sister: Emma is pregnant, but she won't ever see her child born - yet everyone humors her as she continues to plan for a future that will never be there, even if her rational side knows it .
It's a novel that shows all the ways people come to terms with news that is often beyond our reach of understanding and acceptance - and it breaks your heart when you read about people having to choose between two families, the one of origin and the one formed as adults, because they cannot be in two places at the same time at the end of the world.

It's a novel that causes anxiety, but also instills hope and makes us understand that we are never alone - that even in the face of major tragedies, we will always find a hand to hold. Wherever we are, whatever we believe, however we decide to face it - in the end we are not alone and we have left a tangible mark of our lives.

Those on Earth discover their days are numbered. A giant meteor, Foxworth, will reach Earth in 3 ½ months, destroying it and all on the planet. For Simon, all he wants to do is spend his time left with his girlfriend, Tilda. But Tilda, not able to compete in her swimming meets, her future no more, suddenly wants to live life, which means without Simon as she spends time with other guys and dipping into drugs and drink. Meanwhile, her friend, Lucinda, who had dropped out of school and drifted away from her friends, including Tilda because she had developed cancer, has stopped chemo. She writes on the TellUs app--a journal to be left for aliens about life on Earth.

Tilda is found dead—suspected murdered, but police no longer have resources or time to find her murderer. Lucinda decides to find out who might have done it. With the help of Simon, who many say killed her.

I was surprised to find myself hooked with this YA pre-apocalyptic thriller novel that has teenage angst (especially with Simon) and a mystery. I wanted to see if Lucinda and Simon solved the whodunit and followed the story to the end, which I knew would be the end of the earth and all life. It’s a dark storyline, but a damn good story.

The End was such a beautifully written story. The story is told from the point of view of two characters who are going to die when a meteor called Foxworth strikes the earth. The whole world is on countdown. I loved the switching back and forth between Lucinda and Simon, both characters were so well written. The story is so intense because you know that the world is coming to an end for these people. There is a mystery thrown in the mix which was a solid whodunit. I felt like I was holding my breath through the last part of the book. I did not want it to end. This is such a great book.

The End is a translated work by @matsstrandberg_ The story is set in Sweden and follows a group of teenagers. Unfortunately, there is a huge asteroid hurtling towards the earth and scientists have predicted the exact time and day that the asteroid, Foxworth, will extinguish life on Earth.

When I first started this I was just like man, this is bleak. Teenagers waiting for the end of the world isn’t really an easy read. But then, amongst all this, one of the teens is murdered. And the police don’t really have the resources, or the time, to worry about catching a killer. At that point I was hooked.

Though I felt that overall there were instances were the book dragged a bit, this was an interesting read and one I would recommend.

Translation of an award-winning Swedish novel, I read this through the courtesy of the publisher and Netgalley. This was a terrific novel. The characters won your sympathy for their own stories and circumstances outside of the main fact of the impending destruction of Earth by a comet hurtling toward it. The “countdown” is in months, then weeks, then days. The narrative is divided between the teens who are friends. The suspense is, at times, almost unbearable. The search for answers in the face of different tragedies other than the end of all life reveals their strengths and vulnerabilities. Also reviewed on Goodreads.