Thank you so much to NetGalley for sending me a copy of this book. I was super excited to read it. It did not disappoint! Highly recommend!

This book is about so much more than a virus killing men only. The many "what ifs" it draws are pretty scary themselves. It made a very good read that I'm sure my reading group is going to love!!

A delightful book full of adventure, action, and thrills. Fun to read, engrossing world building, and very descriptive imagery made it feel like it was cinematic. It's hard to resist the story as it drives forward. Would recommend.

The End of Men was a heart wrenching but captivating book about what might happen to our society if a deadly illness spread that targeted only males.

As a parent to three boys, this book was a really emotional read. I thought, though, that the premise was incredibly interesting and read through this quickly. The reader is given several different points of view and for me that added a lot of depth. The emotion I felt while reading this and the tears I cried came from knowing firsthand what it is like to be a parent and be scared during a pandemic, but then also imagining what it would be like to lose my children, my husband, my brother. We joke about sending all the men to Jupiter and it's a fun laugh, but imagining something like this actually happening broke my heart. All that is to say, probably ironically, that I really liked this book and I am glad I was able to read it.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Penguin Group for an advanced reader copy of this novel. This review will be published on Goodreads as well as Instagram under the handle @literary.erica.

Despite reading this while living through a pandemic, I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I loved reading this book through the eyes of multiple narrators.

This book absolutely ripped my heart out. I am not a crier in any sense of the word and I found myself tearing up at multiple points through this book and had a nice little cry at the end.

This book was just way too relevant for me to not feel it deeply. The End Of Men follows several female narrators as they deal with the ramifications of a deadly virus that only impacts men. It was fast-paced and terrifying, and I could not put it down. I found myself sneaking a couple pages on my phone whenever I could at work.

The virus in the book started much as Coronavirus did, far removed from the narrator and seeming like an impossible problem for someone else to deal with. Fast forward, and the virus quickly wreaked havoc on the world causing shut downs of borders, businesses, and life in general. Sound familiar yet?

As much as I want to call this book a terrifying, dystopian novel - it so closely resembles a ramped up version of the world we have been living in the past year and a half. All of the “what-ifs” and anxieties that the human race experienced since early 2019 are blown into a magnified proportion in this novel. What if things had been worse? What if covid-19 only affected males? What if covid-19 had a 90% mortality rate?

Sweeney-Baird started this novel in 2018, imagining a world in which humanity was ravaged by a virus. Little did she know we were about to face Covid-19.

The End Of Men made me feel incredibly grateful for everything that I have, and gave me a renewed appreciation for the fact that I am still healthy and living life as close to normal as possible. The past year and a half could have gone so much worse.

I didn't personally enjoy this one as much as I'd hoped, but I feel bad because I think if it hadn't come out mid-Covid I would have loved it! And I was so amazed to hear that the author had written it pre-pandemic!

Sweeney-Baird’s debut speculative fiction novel, written prior to Covid’s arrival, tackles the premise of what the world would be like if 90 percent of the men disappeared from the planet. Set in 2025, The End of Men opens just as the first case of a virus has appeared, and it follows various characters (mostly women) as they deal with this mysterious virus and come to terms with a changed world. The story is told in first-person narratives, including the doctor who treats the first victim of the virus, an intelligence analyst who assists the government as it reshapes its workforce, and one of the doctors rushing to create a vaccine. Through their eyes, Sweeney-Baird chronicles how the world would be impacted by such a large gender imbalance – from the loss of husbands and sons to a changed workforce and what it now would mean to give birth to a son. The End of Men is a truly thought-provoking read that will stay with me for a long time.

So eerily appropriate to this current pandemic age, it's almost hard to believe it was written prior to the COVID outbreak (the only tell-tale signs are small things like using Skype instead of Zoom and people actually wanting to be vaccinated to prevent harm to themselves and their loved ones). As with many books using multiple POVs, some characters are more interesting than others, but the individual chapters are short enough that you'll find yourself with a character you like soon enough. At first, I was a little disappointed that the story kind of petered out with no real climax and just an extended denouement but after chewing on it for a bit, it seemed appropriate for the story that was being told.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free ARC.

**4.5/5 Stars**

If you are looking for a fast-paced terrifying thriller about a plague, look no further. This is definitely your book!

If you cannot bear the idea of reading about a virus killing over half of the world's population right now, then this is definitely NOT your book.

I'm someone who has always enjoyed reading about viruses and diseases (in fact, I'm taking microbiology for fun this fall!), and was completely engrossed in books about Ebola in the 1900s.

Despite my interests, some of this book was just a bit too discomforting to read because of its parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic plaguing our world right now. As I read the book, I kept thinking "man, I guess COVID could get worse," which isn't something I want to imagine given COVID-19's already devastating impact.

As for the book and storyline itself, I really enjoyed it. I am sure this will be made into a movie at some point. It reads more like a script or screenplay than a book, which isn't a bad thing at all. You really don't want to put it down because of the way it is structured.

The book has numerous female leads sharing what it is like to experience a plague that wipes out men, including infants and children, indiscriminately. As an archaeologist and historian myself, I really liked the perspective of the woman who was a historian documenting what was taking place. There's another character who is working for the government in intelligence, making decisions about how to protect her country while those in security forces are dropping left and right (because soldiers are predominantly men). And there's a female scientist working hard to devise a vaccination against the plague before the entire world's population is unable to replicate itself.

The author did a good job of imagining how a plague that only affects men might change and reconfigure society, as frightening as that may sound. This is one of those books you could easily read in a day because it is so well written and engaging.

Thank you to the author, Christina Sweeney-Baird, NetGalley, and the publisher, Doubleday Canada, for an advanced reader copy of The End of Men.

Although the premise of this book was promising, the story lacked the appeal I expected. Perhaps it felt unrealistic due to 2020. It cannot be easy to write a book about a pandemic and then see it compared to an actual pandemic, but nonetheless, the fact that the storyline swept from character to character gave the novel a disjointed feel. I suspect the novel might have appealed to me more if it had focused on one character and followed that person from the beginning to the end.

Year 2025, A and E in Scotland. A man had just been admitted and three hours later, he was dead. The same happened to all the other men who were in the hospital. Dr. Amanda MacLean tried to treat the first patient, whom she named Patient Zero, but failed to save him and the others who showed the same symptoms too. She reported the cases and expressed her suspicion about a possible virus outbreak. Not only were her concerns ignored, but she was ‘completely cracked up’ and a ‘raving lunatic’ by her peers.

The virus outbreak, called the Plague, took the lives of men, ultimately taking away fathers, husbands and sons from families. Jobs that were previously dominated by men in fields such as medicine, military, science and technology, and law were now taken over by women.

The author had created a terrifying yet realistic pandemic world such as online dating for women to meet other women, baby boys being separated from their mothers at birth to save them from being exposed to the asymptomatic carriers i.e. the women and/men who were immune to it; teenage boys who did not show symptoms were being placed in remote areas of the Highlands, and rationing of food.

This had a very good start that piqued my interest until when I’m almost a third into the book and realized there were so many other characters, and I was suddenly losing track who was who and decided to just follow the story instead of the characters. Doing so, it helped with finishing the story. There wasn’t really a ‘main character’ to begin with. If only a few characters were chosen, it would’ve given them more depth, therefore the story would’ve been more affecting.

That said, I thought overall, this was quite a decent and an interesting read. I was impressed by how close the author was in ‘predicting’ the pandemic world, despite writing pre-covid. A promising debut.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are mine.

Good story! Interesting plot and a little close to home with our current pandemic. Looking forward to reading more by this author.

Wow! Amanda Maclean is a doctor in Scotland who is on the front lines when patients start coming in and end up dying just a day or two after visiting the emergency room. She realizes it's an illness that is mostly affecting men, but no one wants to listen to her. The pandemic quickly spreads from Scotland to the rest of the world. Men and boys are the only ones dying, but women can be carriers.

The chapters alternate between the storylines of dozens of women and one or two men. The chapters are short and everything moves quickly. Just as you get involved with a character you're off to the next person. It was a little unreal to read about a pandemic in the middle of a pandemic, but it worked.

Ninety percent of the males throughout the world have died and women have to learn to do all of the jobs that were primarily done by men. The world is forced to change to accommodate women for a change. Just before reading this, I'd read the nonfiction title, Invisible Women, so it was interesting to hear one of the male survivors complaining that when someone talked about "people" they meant women and he was tired of being looked at because he could father children. What a change!

I read this in just a few days and would've finished it in one sitting if I didn't have to work. It makes you think about just how much the world and the way it's designed revolves around men and how much would have to change if only a few men remained.

A deadly virus in a near future kills 90% male population, its upto the people, women to save men because we need to procreate and repopulate the earth.

Interesting synopsis with a lot of potential, the storytelling reminded me of several dystopian novels. Dystopia is my favourite genre, so I have read many books in the topic. Although this setting is in a near future 2025, the reality portrayed was a little off IMO and I think reading this while physically and mentally being in a pandemic hit me hard. View of the world and our society without men portrayed by the author is fresh, imaginative and seriously impressive. [3.75/5]

Thank you Putnam and Netgalley for the arc.

Sweeny-Baird has tried to paint a world where a male-specific Plague has ravaged the world, killing ~90% of the male population. Sounds interesting; I wasn’t sure if this was going to be more social commentary or thriller, and turns out it's a horror book because

There’s are sooooooo many places you could go with this plot line, and unfortunately the author has decided to focus on multiple middle aged, highly educated women with children that spend the entire book pining about their dead sons and husbands. Bechel test, who? What about women that don’t live in the UK, USA or Canada (there’s one Russian and two Malay chapters out of ~seventy chapters; the majority of the rest are middle aged white women). Does South America or Africa or the rest of Asia even exist? What about the viewpoint of female children, what about poorer families, what about a POV from a world leader? Why is China the only country to have a civil war and not any other country? What happens to the economy with men dying? How does faith and religion change? Do societies come together or fracture? What happens to people in the middle of school? What happens to the environment? I’d have liked chapters from the POV of dying men. Why do I have to listen to a few women wax poetic about their young sons and perfect, loving, sweet, generous, gorgeous, strong, daring husbands for 400 pages? If a character study was the goal, then the author should have stuck with a single POV narrator and not switched between ~20 characters with such short chapters.

There were also many smaller things that didn’t add up to me, and added to the reading frustration.
- In the second chapter an ER doctor realizes she has a plague on her hands after eight patients. Seems quick to assume.
- A Canadian virologist professor (top of her field; ends up making the vaccine) doesn’t hear about the Plague until 5k men have died in the UK. Don’t you think she would have heard about it earlier? The author also paints this character ridiculously. When she discovers the vaccine, she says “Yes, I am in fact a God.” I rolled my eyes.
- A newspaper article in one of the chapters claims that most of America doesn’t know what’s happening in the UK even though, by that point, 100,000 men have died. In our news culture? Really? CNN would have been on it after 20 deaths.
- NOBODY wants to figure out the source of the Plague. Isn’t that what news sources and doctors and virologists would all want to know? Guess not. Only one person thinks to look for the source, and only after more than a year into the outbreak.
- I don’t think the author has done any sort of scientific analysis. Her explanation for why the Plague only impacts men could have been a hypothesis an 8th grader came out with.
- There is only one chapter that talks about gender and sex. There is only one other chapter that features a gay relationship, and that’s because all the men are gone and she’s lonely.
- One UK woman goes out on a date to a restaurant with an immune man during the height of the pandemic. Further through the book, a government official talks about restaurants are closed and how the UK should open them so people could feel normal for a little bit. So….. which is it? There were multiple instances of these kinds of contradictions.

I’ve read close to 100 books so far in 2021 and this is the one of the worst. Top three least favorite, for sure.

<i>I (regrettably) voluntarily obtained a digital version of this book free from Netgalley and Penguin Group in exchange for an honest review. </i>

Pandemic novels during a pandemic are a bit much for some, but not for me. In The End of Men, Christina Sweeney-Baird, envisions a virus that strikes in 2025 and only kills males. The story switches perspectives many times to tell the full story and impact of this virus. It starts with an doctor working at a Scottish hospital who notices that several men have come in within 24 hours with what appears at first to be sepsis. They wind up dying. She raises the alarm the the hospital higher ups and the nation's health agencies, but is pretty much told to simmer down. Within days, it is apparent that it isn't just sepsis and that it is only impacting males. There are several characters that reoccur throughout the book, but we also have some one-off perspectives. The narrative style reminded me a bit of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Most narrators were females from from various disciplines, there was the aforementioned doctor, a CDC scientist, a journalist from the Washington Post, and more. It was interesting seeing how the author thought society would be impacted by a severe decrease in the population of men.

I recommend this one!

This book had a very interesting premise, but unfortunately wasn't that well executed or at least it managed to bore me so much in Chapter One that I couldn't bring myself to finish it. Maybe if I had no other books to read I wouldn't have easily shelved this book but the fact that I have so many other books that I can read, I didn't see the reason to continue with something I wasn't enjoying.

I got this from NetGalley in exchange for a review**

This was hard for me to rate.. I can't say I liked it, actually, I quite disliked it. This book made me uncomfortable and quite sad. It had me crying quite a few times and I even had to set it down a few times because it was too much for me to handle...

All that said, this book accomplished its job because of this. It isn't a happy feel-good story. It is a story about a deadly plague that kills only men... this coming out during an actual pandemic just makes it hit harder.

I struggled some with the PLETHORA of different perspectives. We follow people all around the world through the years of this plague. It can be a bit hard to connect when we have so many PoVs I think.

As a mom myself, especially one with a young boy, there were moments that brought out visceral pain and emotions. SO while I can't say I liked this book, it was a good book if that makes sense.

I am always interested in a feminist dystopia: The Handmaid's Tale, Afterland, Vox, Blue Ticket, The Grace Year, Red Clocks, The Mother Code (I could go on and on) and while I loved most of those, I often felt like something was forced or "gimmicky." This always left me wanting more--a smarter, more fully flushed out story with a broad range of detailed repercussions. The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird filled that void and is exactly the book I have been waiting for! I'll cut to the chase and say this is currently my favorite 2021 release. It shocked me, ripped my heart out, made me gasp...and I loved every minute of it! The depth of details and levels of intelligence layered throughout the chapters is magnificent. My mind reels that this is Sweeney-Baird's debut novel. Writing her first draft of the novel between September 2018 and June 2019, Sweeney-Baird had no idea that a pandemic would soon ravage our world. She simply asked herself "How far could I take my imagination? How would a global pandemic with an enormous death rate change the world?" and she delivered a story that forced me to ask myself what I would do in about a hundred different situations. The politics, the vaccine race, the breakdown of the economy, the shift of entire governments, and the devastating loss faced by most families was familiar yet intensified from what we have all experienced over the last year. An absolutely amazing novel that I cannot recommend enough!