I sadly didn’t get to finish this book as I hit a massive reading slump during the middle.

I found the premise intriguing, and the title alone was what drew me in.
I would’ve enjoyed it much more (might’ve even completed it) if Sweeney-Baird had put focus on two of the characters. I personally am not fond of multiple POVs, I find it confusing and get the characters mixed up.

I wasn't entirely sure that reading pandemic based speculative fiction would be the best idea during an actual pandemic but I found that The End Of Men was still very much enjoyable having experienced a similar situation in real life.
I love multi-POV books but this time I think I would have preferred less as I found it hard to keep up with the characters and their stories particularly when some weren't re-visited throughout the pandemic unfolding or were introduced mid way through.
Not one to read if the current state of the world and the pandemic gives you anxiety but one worth considering in the future.

Picture a world where a virulent virus kills 90% of men. Really try to imagine what it would be like - and now try to predict the consequences. It’s an incredibly scary premise and this book explores just such a scenario. Books about COVID-19 are just starting to hit our shelves 18 months into our current, real-life pandemic but this one raises the stakes dramatically. I was surprised to learn that this is the author’s debut as it’s just so fantastic.

Told in a one-perspective-per-chapter format, the story begins where the Great Male Plague (so it becomes known) does - in a hospital emergency department in 2025. Men are suddenly dying for no discernible reason within 2 days of getting sick. All too quickly, it spreads because everyone is a carrier but only men are susceptible.

I really, really loved this book. Sweeney-Baird has really thought long and hard about what a pandemic of this magnitude would do to the world and I was just so pleased with the way she explored it. Telling the small stories (a mum in the Highlands forced to take in a group of young boys to protect them in isolation, a man stuck on a cruise ship in the Northern ocean) and the big ones (the scientists working on a vaccine, an intelligence officer doing the best she can to manage a growing crises, an anthropologist wanting to tell the stories of this time), she stitches together a moving portrait of humankind’s response to the tragedy.

We are right there beside the women who lose everyone - their fathers, husbands and sons. Their grief and their sheer sense of loss is extremely acute. We feel their jealousy and impotent rage when a friend who has only girls also has a husband who is miraculously one of the 10% immune.

Apart from the personal stories, I found it absolutely fascinating how the author tackled the larger problems such a virus would pose. How do you keep a country, an economy running without most of the men? Male-dominated industries like law enforcement or trades suddenly need women to step in and fill the gaps, which they do. Everything from agriculture and manufacturing to local and federal government is completely upended and I really enjoyed the insight we got into how these problems were dealt with and overcome. The geo-political impacts predicted were particularly interesting to me.

One particular aspect I liked was the way that the author explored the impact of a male companion/sexual partner shortage - you would think that as a limited supply, demand would increase; I won’t spoil it but I thought this was cleverly dealt with.

If you enjoy speculative fiction and dystopian I would highly recommend this book. If however you have suffered a recent personal loss or are trying to conceive, be warned this may not be for you. The grief of so much death permeates this story, as it should if such a thing were to happen.

I am sure when the author first conceptulised the story for her debut novel "the end of men" she could not have dreamt the world would be changed indefinitely by the global pandemic COVID-19 but the themes and events in the book are made incredibly more realistic and frightening due to the current circumstance we find ourselves in.

Amanda is truly inspirational pioneer, battling her own grief and finding her voice and I enjoyed her narrative far more than any other of the major or minor characters stories - in fact my only negative on the whole book would have been the noise of the minor characters and indeed I would have enjoyed the book a little more if it had stripped it back and focused on Amanda's story. That said the writing style and delineation between the main characters were clear and easy to follow so keeping track of the characters wasn't an issue.

This is out of my comfort zone as I usually prefer a legal thriller, but I loved the dystopian and scarily close tot he future style of the book - I am not sure how accurate medically the prose is but I didn't let that stand in the way of what is a truly outstanding novel.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC of END OF MEN in exchange for this honest review 4/5 stars from me.

There are so many things that hit close to the bone in this one for me.

The pandemic aspect was throwing reminders of the course things took last year. Hard to believe it was written before ‘everything’. The response of people to the women and ‘their ideas’ echo widely held beliefs.

This one for me lagged a bit in the middle and the pace is slightly slower than i would have liked, but it was still an enjoyable read.

It’s 2025 and several people who visit the same Scottish emergency room, mostly for seemingly minor ailments, all die. Within weeks, a deadly influenza, with zero chance of recovery once the patient has contracted it, is sweeping across the world culminating into a full blown pandemic which leaves around 90% of the world’s male population dead. Yes, only the male population as it’s only men who are affected by this new Plague.

Sweeney-Baird includes author notes at the beginning of the book explaining how she either has the worst timing ever or some special psychic abilities as she wrote this book in 2018 and the beginning of 2019, before Covid. She includes many ideas that have become true to life: border closures, families separated due to the cessation of international travel, hospital systems stretched beyond their means, but it was the ones which haven’t become a reality due to Covid not being so gender specific which I found fascinating, such as the demise of male dominated political parties.

Like some other dystopian books (World War Z springs to mind) the book is told from the point of view of several characters in an almost interview/memoir format of each. The characters’ lives did overlap here and there though and there was forward momentum in the stories. I thought there might have been too many characters at times but Sweeney-Baird definitely has some skills and kept it all together pretty well (impressive – this is a debut novel).

I loved the way women in this world adapted to the lack of males. There is a strong feminist message in the book, of course. Suddenly men being treated, essentially, the way women are treated today in several scenarios was funny but also a bit of a stinging takedown of today’s misogynists by Sweeney-Baird. But not for a minute should you think it’s 400 odd pages of hating on men. The tender and compassionate way Sweeney-Baird writes about the deaths of the men was a highlight.

The book was incredibly sad and I cried more than once. Again, I’m not exactly sure about the timing of its release and how the reading audience will accept its content. Living in Queensland, I’ve not been as personally affected as others around the globe so it’s hard for me to judge. I will just say that if you think you might be upset due to the pandemic content, this might not be the book for you. However, who can tell? There was that whole time when everyone had to watch Contagion after all and I’m starting to see a lot of buzz about The End of Men already. Overall, I can see why and would recommend.

4 ½ out of 5

3.5/5

The End of Men follows the outbreak and consequences of 'The Plague' that sweeps across the world and has a high mortality rate in human males.

This is an interesting book to read in our current times where there were definitely a lot of parallels to draw in the way a pandemic was responded to. The book has a strong start it setting up this outbreak and the thoughts and feelings of some of those who were there at the beginning.

As the book went on, it didn't feel as strong. There were A LOT of different characters and perspectives and some were only seen once or twice. While these perspectives did usually add something in terms of different perspectives and insight into the types of situations they would be facing, having so many at times made it difficult to keep track of and made me lose some of my sense of connection to the characters and events described. There were also a lot of unlikeable characters, many but not all of whose reactions and actions did seem realistic and justifiable for the horrific circumstances they had to face. It also seemed unclear by the end whether the story was truly running with "everything is irreparably different" or "though things have changed, we can now more or less continue as normal".

There were a number of issues addressed and explored that I wasn't necessarily expecting such as the impact on the LGBTQ community and I did appreciate this, though these were often passed by quite quickly.

This book covers so many years exploring both outbreak, living through the plague, and the impact and how people carry on afterwards, that we didn't always have enough time to sit with things.

Overall this was an interesting look at the effects something like this could have, but as a narrative I did feel somewhat detached by the end.

The End Of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird is about a pandemic; this one unlike what our world is going through now affects 9 out of 10 men with women being asymptomatic hosts. Despite this difference there are a lot of similarities with our predicament. Countries quarantining from each other to prevent the spread and measures set up for self-preservation. The nature of their survival centres around the fact that communities have been dominated by men and now women have to step up and re-establish a functioning society.
Apparently the draft for this novel was actually written in 2018 so to be able to depict such a pandemic is remarkable. The panic and grief is profound and wide spread.
This is an excellent debut novel. It is well written with characters that take us on the pandemic journey of finding out how it came about, researching how the virus functions and finding a vaccine that works. Even the last section - The Recovery - appears similar to Australia at the moment; the government is describing the current situation as Recovery.
Given the pandemic the whole is going through it is an interesting read, even if a bit depressing.

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins Publishers Australia for a copy to read and review.

I'm not sure why I requested bro read this, but it was a good read all in all.
I still feel like it would make a better movie than a book.
At times it felt almost exhausting to read through and I didn't enjoy all the different characters and POVs. That just felt like overload for me. However the writing is good and if you can stomach breading about a pandemic, you should definitely give this a try.

This was a very interesting read! I knew I was going to enjoy it just from reading the blurb but it did not disappoint!

I also love the cover too!

A pandemic book, written before the pandemic, this book does a great job of capturing the panic, exhaustion and confusion of an event like this, including the long search for a cure.
The book tells the story of a virus that takes only men, causing the world to grieve, then shift to a new world centred on women.
There are multiple stories at play here, with women from all over the world responding to their grief and to the call to serve a new purpose. Sometimes there seems to be so many stories that it lessens the impact overall.
The tension of the novel rises as the pandemic worsens, and it seems to hold this level of tension right the way through, rather than hitting peaks of tension. This does leave the reader a little emotionally flat as there are no markers to guide our response to the story.
Seen in the light of a real pandemic response, this is an accurate representation, but the vast character list and shifting perspectives leaves me a little disappointed with the outcome.

Not gonna lie, I really questioned my past self for requesting an ARC of this book. Not because the book is bad, it's great actually and that's the problem 😅 The story starts with the emergence of an extremely deadly virus affecting 90% of all men, killing them in a few days and spreading like wildfire because 1- it's highly contagious and 2- women are asymptomatic hosts.

We follow multiple characters over a few years from the spread of the pandemic to the aftermath and the recovery once a vaccine is found. Knowing that this book was written before 2020, it's uncanny how spot on it is... I mean, that "it's just a flu" line just hits differently now. Seeing all these people facing their inevitable death or that of their loved ones was really hard. A big part of the story is about the loss and the grief and it felt so real that I found the whole experience quite anxiety inducing to be honest. It also talks a lot about how society has to rearrange itself and how the male domination in some professions (government, doctors, army, etc) made it even harder to recover. It does end up on a somewhat hopeful note but make no mistake, this is a heavy read.

Note: the book addresses only slightly the topic of transgender people (the virus targets the Y chromosome) and the specific struggles that they are facing in the post-Plague society. There is a chapter in which we meet a trans nurse and she highlights how these issues have been wildly overlooked by the new governments but it's pretty short and surface level.

All in all, was it the best time for me to read this? Probably not. But I'm still glad I read it and I would definitely recommend it if you can handle its topic at the moment.

Christina Sweeney-Baird must have had some prescience when this novel was first thought of. I wasn't sure if I wanted to read about a pandemic given how the current one with Covid has unfurled and ensared the entire planet, but I'm sort of glad I did. The End of Men plague is certainly a lot worse, than the one we are currently confronted with. I feel almost lucky to be living now and not in her future made-up world, which nonetheless seems recognisable and real. What I really liked were the people stories. It gave me some relief to move from one character to another. I felt all of them, but it didn't weigh me down in the way the horrible could have, if I was totally engrossed in only one person's life and death struggles. Certainly The End of Men helps us understand how bureaucracies are as fallible as the people who run them and how impotent we are in the face of mighty microbes and our own building blocks. But it also showed us hope. How good people can be, even despite their hurts and grieving, at helping each other.

I don't know how to rate this one. I'm not sure how much it will stick with me, and I don't know how much I can recommend this to people given the current Pandemic.

Written in 2018 before covid was even a fever dream, The End of Men is an account of a future viral Pandemic affecting 9 in 10 men as recounted by the women in their lives: an anthropologist, an A&E doctor, a CDC researcher, a virologist, a remote farm owner forced to take in evacuees, a deputy director of MI5, a foreign nanny, the wife of Patient Zero.

Their stories are horrifying and touching, and altogether too close to home. The story mostly deals with "how do you process grief when 100% of the world is touched by it at once?" as well as the logistical what ifs of a world population decimated and no one available to take on the dirty and dangerous jobs that employ mostly males. Particularly real right now, it would have been a mind-blowing read had covid not happened

It’s November 2025 and a male patient arrives at a Glasgow Hospital with what appears to be a mild case of flu, but a few hours later he is dead. It quickly becomes evident that this is a new virus and while women can be carriers, only men are affected. The illness – which becomes known as The Plague – kills quickly. There is no cure or vaccine and only about 9% of men are immune. Within months, the world is transformed as many men die and the rest are forced to self isolate.

I’ve read a lot of pandemic books over the years but having experienced Covid 19 made this feel less abstract and more relatable. In the early stages people adopt measures like social distancing and wiping down surfaces with disinfectant wipes and it felt eerily familiar. But our familiarity with an (albeit far less frightening) pandemic also means that some sections felt unlikely – the process of vaccine development for instance (where were the clinical trials?!).

What I found particularly intriguing was the way the world changes to accommodate the absence of men. The need to fasttrack women into occupations that have traditionally been male dominant (electricians, pilots, waste removal etc). The need to keep newborn sons from their mothers who might infect them immediately after birth (although I find it extremely unlikely that New Zealand would be the country to pioneer such a programme).

The book covers a long timespan – six years – and focuses on a LOT of characters, almost all of whom are women. This gives the book a very cinematic feel, reminiscent of the film Contagion. We move from an A&E doctor in Glasgow to a professor of Virology in Toronto to a Filipina nanny in Singapore to a policewoman in San Francisco to an MI5 officer in London etc. (I counted at least 13 characters who we move between, although there are 4-5 main ones). At times this means there are cliff hangers and you need to wait 100+ pages to find out what happened. It also means that you end up less invested in the characters and there were a couple that I actively disliked.

It’s fast paced, it’s fascinating and it’s a good reminder that we could be in a far worse situation than the one we are currently in.

Loved it! A thought provoking twist on the end of the world as we know it. At times a real tear jerker, with the very real stories of women going through an unimaginable time. They do prevail, through their strength and working together to rebuild the world and a workable way of life.
The imagination of Christina Sweeney-Baird was a pleasure to read.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital arc of this book, all opinions expressed here are my own.

The End of Men by Christina Sweeney-Baird is the author’s debut novel. It is extremely well written, with relatable character but it’s about a global pandemic.

I wondered about the wisdom of this, until I found the author drafted this book in 2018, before Covid-19 even happened! So while some may find this hard to read given the current situation in our world, it was an interesting read and worth giving a chance.

Told from multiple character’s viewpoints, some for just once chapter, others through the whole story. The End of Men brings to light a pandemic of global proportions, that kills males within a few days of contracting the virus. With an almost 100% mortality rate, no cure and women also as asymptomatic hosts, it becomes a race to find a vaccine before it’s too late to save the world.

Just think about how many jobs are predominately male - police, army, doctors, pilots, even garbage truck drivers. The list goes on. What would happen if they were all suddenly gone?

My favourite characters were Amanda, the doctor who realised she treated Patient Zero and tried to alert the authorities, but was dismissed as being a hysterical female. And Elizabeth, a young American who insists on putting her knowledge to the test in England, helping develop a vaccine.

My least favourite character was Lisa, a stuck up Canadian doctor on another team developing the vaccine.

Told during and after the pandemic hits this is a fascinating 4 star read. I look forward to reading more books by this author in the future.