I picked up this book despite not being enticed by the plot because I've always found Cauley to be smart and observant and funny on Twitter. I don't believe she brought her strengths to this book, which was full of two-dimensional characters with unbelievable motivations.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Aaron, for the protagonist's boyfriend whose appearance drives the rest of the plot, is very thinly drawn. He seems like a flawless human until he isn't. I kept thinking Cauley was going to reveal a secret about all his "coffee runs" but it seems like after his introduction compels Aretha to move in with him, he's not really needed anymore plot-wise.

Aretha, who is initially appalled by all the guns and the bunker and the survivalist nonsense, goes from being blackmailed into a gun run to be almost aroused by them with hardly any development at all. At the end, she turns against her boyfriend and roommates just as fast.

I like Cauley, but I don't think her skills are cut out for long-form work just yet.

Aretha is a very driven single woman living in a big city. She’s perpetually single, but one week, on her third first date, she meets Aaron. Aaron is successful in his own right, he’s a coffee entrepreneur, but also a doomsday prepper. He lives with two roommates, and one of them has built them an underground bunker in the backyard. Oh, and in their spare time, they are gun runners. What could go wrong? As Aretha falls in love and moves in with Aaron, how will she, an uptight corporate lawyer, survive living with illegal gun gunners and bunker digging roommates?

I don’t know why this book was described as humorous, I didn’t find it funny at all, not even in the slightest. This book tried to do too much for me, climate change, guns, corporate politics, affordable housing – it was just too much! I don’t have a problem with books talking about these things, but this one just felt like it was trying to cover a ton, and not really well. While this was a quick read, I didn’t find it enjoyable. Oh, and because it covered so many hot button topics, it didn’t go into any of them really at all. Just annoying.

I would like to extend my thanks to @netgalley and the publisher Catapult, Counterpoint Press, and Soft Skull Press for my advanced e-arc in exchange for an honest review. While this one was a miss for me, it might be the best book you’ve read this year! Check it on January 10th of next year.

A witty, modern take on doomsdayers. This book was cleverly written and hilarious featuring some very compelling characters. Though this book was an effective satire on modern times, it lacked plot movement and some of the secondary characters would have benefited from some additional character development.

Mostly adding to the chorus -- not sure I have anything to contribute that others haven't stated better already.

I was lucky enough to win a digital ARC of THE SURVIVALISTS by Kashana Cauley in a Shelf Awareness giveaway. Thanks for the early look, and have a spooky but safe Halloween!

The Survivalist by Kashana Cauley was absolutely amazing. An accurate and breathtaking look at how trauma shapes and forms our future in sometimes good ways and in ways that we don't expect This was a stunning novel and I cannot wait to read more from this author!!

I wasn't sure this was for me, but I liked overall, I can see the appeal for this given the satire presented. This book will probably do well when it's released.

I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!

A nice non-offensive book. Did it break any boundaries? No. Was it entertaining? Sure.

"Pizza dough d*ck". That's it. You'll get what I mean when you read it.

Completely devoured this satire framed in a story about survivalists. This book gave me vibes of The Other Black Girl, Black Buck, and The Sellout, all of which I recommend on the regular. This is another to add to the list.

A poignant, timely, and culturally relevant novel about gun rights, ownership, accountability, and what it means to be human in this day and age.

I was very excited about this novel, and the story's beginning when the protagonist finds someone to love but has concerns about his survivalist roommates shows a lot of promise. Unfortunately midstory the author slips into long, drawn-out internal monologues in which the protagonist worries about the future. I imagine most of us spend time doing that ourselves at one point or another, but this was pages upon pages, or at least it felt like it. I also found it hard to believe that wildly intelligent and assertive Aretha let strangers bully her because she's in love.

Satire at its best. You can easily tell the authors influences, with Paul Beatty being at the top of the list. But this novel, and it’s author bring a fresh unique voice to the genre. Solidly funny, and engaging from the start. Worth the read!

Cauley’s debut novel is a millennial burnout narrative that satirizes (in an empathetic way??) some of the more extreme measures people take to feel like they have control in the ever increasingly destabilized/destabilizing present day!

The titular survivalists are an unlikely group of roommates who run a coffee roasting business by day and sell illegal guns and build backyard bunkers by night. Aretha, an overworked lawyer with crushing loan debt and dead parents becomes involved with the survivalists through dating one of them. How and why she transforms from a high-achieving professional to her own version of a survivalist provides the basis for the plot. I got a real thrill out of not being able to predict where this novel was going as I read—to me that is the sign of an author doing things differently.

Cauley is one of the funniest people on the internet and I’m so glad that her book made me LOL for real multiple times and at scenarios where it felt scandalous to laugh. The humor is dark and dry—my favorite :)

Survivalists (colloquially referred to as preppers) as a concept fascinate me the same way cults to. And why not? They are at least cult adjacent: the mentality, the ethics, the ideologies.
This is a tale of an ordinary woman, a young lawyer who idea of preparedness mostly involves spending most of her life working to make partner, who falls in with a small group of survivalists.
Well, that’s an oversimplified description of the plot, anyway. When you get really into it, this is a novel about race and class and privilege and a society that puts its citizens through such an obstacle course on the way to what it seems success that it leaves people floundering and grasping at the most unlikely straws. And also, like so many stories, this is about love.
Love is how it begins, anyway. Our protagonist, Aretha, is searching for it, finding dud after dud, until Aaron comes along and checks every box. Aaron is handsome, kind, considerate, self-employed, self-sufficient AND owns a brownstone. Well, some of it, anyway.
For a New Yorker whose idea of being well housed is maybe not having a flatmate, this is a dream come true. But there’s a but. Aaron shares the brownstone with two other people who are less that friendly to others and more than friendly with guns.
All Aaron wants to do is brew coffee and love Aretha and so she is sold, against her bff’s cautionary advice. All in, Aretha moves in, and proximity breeds strange bedfellows out of them all.
Just as Aretha’s professional life is unraveling, her personal life turns into a very peculiar rollercoaster, a well-armed and dangerous one.
In a way, this novel is about the unmaking of the American dream. Aretha, who followed the premise to the tee, finds herself unmooring and spiraling with such a velocity because the world around her, the world she’d worked herself to the bone to fit into, doesn’t reward her for her sacrifices, but in fact, alternates between indifference and menace. If love isn’t lovely and friendship isn’t friendly and employment isn’t enjoyable, then what is there left? Guns.
Survivalists is, thus, ultimately a tale of disenfranchisement. With race thrown in just right, which is to say cleverly and observationally (like Jordan Peele did in his comedy), not overpoweringly (like Jordan Peele does in his scary movies).
There’s also a great metaphor with the brownstone itself, but you’ll just have tor ead to find out what that is.
Overall, a very good read, one of those things where the narrative and the writing are so strong that you don’t even need to particularly like or emotionally engage with the characters to enjoy. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

The Survivalists paints a picture of how the combination of a person’s race, financial situation, trauma, and relationships might just push them to become the kind of person they never dreamed they would be—and not in a good way.

While I found the premise of this debut novel to be intriguing, the way it was executed left me feeling underwhelmed. While I usually enjoy a good amount of internal dialogue, I felt rather dragged along through the main character’s wandering thoughts in this one.

The ending was pretty strong and I saw much of the social commentary the author was addressing.

Thanks to NetGalley and Soft Skull Press for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.