One of my reading goals for 2023 was to explore more genres and this novel proved to be the perfect start. Categorized as satirical fiction x dystopian, this one was a page turner. It read like a Top 10 Netflix series, you know the ones you end up binging in a day? It gave diverse characters, creative plot, and a little romance with just the right amount of dark humor to keep the story moving along. I think the author knocked it out of the park!

ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇᴠᴇʀ ꜰᴇᴅ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴀ ᴄᴏɴꜱᴘɪʀᴀᴄʏ ᴛʜᴇᴏʀʏ ᴏʀ ᴡɪʟᴅ ᴄʀᴀᴢᴇ?

Remember when that man took bath salts and allegedly turned into a zombie? Well it had me shook and I fed into the zombie craze. I even had a “survivor kit” which is the same concept as the Go-bag, a survivalist staple. This is a bag containing only the essentials that a survivalist keeps at the ready, so thru can grab and go if the alarm ever sounds on Dooms Day.

Put this on your reading list!

Aretha is a strong, independent Black woman who works as a lawyer in NYC and focuses all of her energy on being a corporate success after growing up poor and losing her parents young. When she meets Aaron she quickly falls for him despite his weird unfriendly prepper roommates and the questionable bunker in their backyard. As her professional life begins to fall apart she moves further and further into a world where the worst is bound to happen and the only way to survive is to prepare. I really liked the premise of this book, but I found the writing uneven and the book overall somewhat incohesive. It’s described as darkly humorous, but I didn’t really find it particularly funny or even all that dark in the year of our Lord, 2023 😂 I wanted it to go much further than it did - darker, weirder, more satirical. Still, it was interesting enough for me to hang in until it was over and while there were aspects of the ending that felt forced it did all come together.

First what you need to know is, I am a cover girl and this cover intrigued me. Rope, Swiss Army Knife, Bullets and a few other essentials needed when preparing for doomsday. It also reminds me of few essentials I carry in my car.
This book was funny and fast paced as it moved from scene to scene, yes scene to scene not chapter to chapter as it has no dedicated numbered chapters and I liked that. It allowed the book to play out like a movie around me and I truly enjoyed that.
If you are looking for something fast paced and funny check this one out as Aretha falls for Aaron and falls into something she probably never though would happen to her.

When Aretha meets Aaron she really likes him despite the strange motto for his tactical coffee and his weird roommates. Her best friend however doesn’t feel the same she thinks there’s something not right about him and Aretha can almost agree I mean his friends with doom propers and survivalists who can’t decide on what they’re preparing for and what exactly they’re going to need all the stuff they’re accumulating when she moves in with him however her opinion changes from those strength people to her strange people and her goals change as well she wants wanted to be a successful lawyer that made lots of money but now she daydreams about giving out vegetables with the fellow prepers. When she first met Aaron she was glad he didn’t have parents that she would have to impress but little did you know he would have an extended family but in the end she wanted to be a part of. I love this book they had so many lol moments Ronaldo enjoyed the strangeness of the doomsday preppers I still don’t understand them at all but it made for a really great book and one I highly recommend. I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

This book was long, this book was weird, this book was also SO GOOD. A strong and unique twist on some Get Out tropes that I think adds a lot to the genre and the conversation.

I was curious about this book when I first heard about it and it didn't disappoint. Love has the ability to change one's life drastically, and that's precisely what happens to our protagonist, Aretha. Cauley's writing is solid and quick-witted. I enjoyed this immensely. *Advance copy provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.)

The synopsis of this book drew me in, and to my surprise it was weirder than I had imagined. I liked the book a lot, but felt it went on a little long in places and I wanted a little more action. I liked the characters a lot and felt like Cauley did a great job brining real world ideas into this fictional landscape without feeling preachy or even too on the nose. If you like a little strange with your books, this on is for you.

The Survivalists
by Kashana Cauley
Pub Date: January 10, 2023
Soft Skull Press
For readers of Victor LaValle’s The Changeling, Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, and Zakiya Harris’s The Other Black Girl, The Survivalists is a darkly humorous novel from a smart and relevant new literary voice that's packed with tension, curiosity and wit, and unafraid to ask the questions most relevant to a new generation of Americans: Does it make sense to climb the corporate ladder? What exactly are the politics of gun ownership? And in a world where it’s nearly impossible for young people to earn enough money to afford stable housing, what does it take in order to survive?
The premise of the book drew me to read it. However, the way it was written felt more like a first draft for me.
I felt dragged along in the slog and the main characters wondering thoughts in this one.
Not the book for me, however, others may enjoy it more.
3 stars

The Survivalists is a novel that reads like a movie, seamlessly playing out the scenes of a year plus of Aretha’s life as she goes from sensible, by the book lawyer to a version of herself she doesn’t recognize, but kind of loves. A relationship with ultra hip coffee-roaster Aaron’s unfolds, leading Aretha down an unfamiliar path which she embraces without thinking too much of the subtle changes poking holes in her idyllic life. It’s unlike Aretha to not overthink everything. Aretha, what are you thinking? I found myself wanting to shake some sense into her, but I doubt she’d listen. Dark humor plays well against a cast of players who are alternately fighting against and dancing with the trauma that’s brought them all together. This book had me thinking I need a go-bag, then thinking “damn I need therapy”, as it exposes the survivalist lifestyle.

Oof. I got about 15% through this book and had to put it down. I think this book has great potential, but it was very hard to read. The flow of it felt like it was a first draft that hadn't really been edited. I kept getting jumbled up in the awkward sentences and random asides from the narrator. For me, this overshadowed the originality of the storyline, so I stopped.

very interesting premise, but i feel like the synopsis is a bit misleading as this is really more of a coming-of-age/self-discovery type of story rather than a plotty story about extremists. i think i also would’ve enjoyed this more if it was written in first person - i felt it kept Aretha a bit distant from the reader

This book was a painful read for me because it just did not work. Aretha is a black woman who works as a corporate lawyer as an associate trying to make partner. She meets a guy who has a coffee company and ends up moving in with him. He is not a very developed character. The roommates are survivalists and gun runners. Aretha ends up loving the thrill of selling guns. Not sure what the point of this was, but I was not invested. The survivalists and the law firm folks were over the top and one-dimensional. It was satire, but just did not work.

How does one fall down the rabbit hole? That's what happens to Aretha in this tale of woman who has been striving all of her life and is suddenly unmoored when she falls in love. Aretha is an attorney who has worked hard to get close to partnership. Aaron own a coffee company in Brooklyn and lives with a group who are best described as a tad unhinged. Soon Aretha finds herself along for gun runs, eating soy protein bars, and living in a way she could not have imagined. This is social commentary but it's also a fairly sensitive portrait of a woman whose head is turned. Cauley doesn't try too hard but lets the reader see Aretha's journey, Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

A weirdly accurate story of people looking for control they can't, and how reasonable concerns can spiral into sociopathic needs.

I was excited about this but ultimately disappointed. It read like a first draft not a polished finished work. The writing was almost childish which was strange because of the subject matter. I wish she had a better editor or more practice. I couldn’t bring myself to care about Brittany or Jim or anyone else because the writing all seemed so oddly childlike.

This story sounded so interesting from the blurb, but didn’t live up to the hype when I started reading. I don’t know if I just don’t like this author’s writing style or if it was the story, but this book did not keep my interest. The characters didn’t seem real or fleshed out. I always try to push through when I receive an ARC, but I had to DNF this at about 40%.

In The Survivalists, Aretha, a young Black lawyer living in NYC, becomes entangled with a group of survivalists. These survivalists buy lots of guns, eat bland protein bars... and also sell coffee. As she grows closer to the survivalists, she reevaluates her life goals as well as her relationships with her job and her friends. It's a great premise and this book raises a lot of questions around disasters, survival, housing, race, weapons, families, and relationships to work.

Though I appreciated the overall story, I found the writing to be lacking. I liked nearly all of the plot developments, especially the ending, but it often felt like the focus was in the wrong place. Sometimes I had to go back and reread to figure out how we got from point A to point B so quickly. At times this was due to the way that paragraphs jumped ahead in time significantly between sentences or the lack of section breaks (I'm hoping this is fixed before publication as it feels like it could've been a formatting error; sections contained far too many scenes all jammed together with few transitions). At other times, however, too much time was spent on something minor, while major plot developments and character arcs happened off of the page (Aaron and Aretha's relationship felt particularly underdeveloped).

Still, I did enjoy this book overall. As I said above, it's an excellent and unique premise that poses a lot of questions worth thinking about.

The Survivalists has a really unique premise but the story just lost me. I didn't find it satirical so much as a little jumbled. I do appreciate the book and everything it tried to do, but it just fell a little flat. I did enjoy parts of it and the overall message, I just wish it brought more to the table.

The concept was interesting enough to draw me in and I liked what I did read of this book so far, but I didn't realize it was a PDF when I requested it and it wasn't engaging enough to keep me reading in that format. I'll definitely give this one another try when it's released and available in print and .epub, though, and am giving it a placeholder three star rating in the meantime. (In this case the fault was mine because I didn't check the format before requesting, but publishers--especially independent publishers--I'm begging you, please make your electronic review copies available as .epubs! Based on my own informal research, I'm just one of many readers who strongly does not prefer reading in PDF on my mobile devices.)

Clever and unique premise, sold as a satirical but a bit too jumbled for me to illicit many laughs. I do think Cauley has a real talent for writing though and I expect we will see more from her in the fiction genre.

I appreciated that this book while it did have a lot of current and prevalent issues, it did a good job of showing how race and economic standing can effect our deepest inherited struggles and the way we act, perceive and make decisions.

And while I felt this just missed the mark in cohesion I thought the ending was stellar.