Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday books for this electronic advance reader copy.

Five years after a micro-plastic storm reduces human civilization to a barely-survivable landscape of polluted air, vegetation and wildlife, Katie and her four-year-old son, Harry, are eking out a hungry, always-vigilant existence in their flat outside of London. Mild seasons are difficult and winters teeter on a knife-edge of starvation. As Katie begins preparations for another long winter, her and Harry’s presence is discovered by a group of men from a neighboring settlement. In her panicked rush to react to the new threat, she uncovers a message long hidden from sight, left by her fiance, from whom she was separated during the storm. The message is one of hope as well as practical help and is the start of a long journey in search of a reunion and a different future.

Not Alone bears obvious similarities to other novels in a sub-genre I’ll call “Post-apocalyptic Travel Literature”. It’s members include Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, The Stand by Stephen King, The Road by Cormac McCarthy and The Wanderers by Chuck Wendig to name a few. The journey is long, there are no cell phones, few resources and dangers lurk around every corner. While the theme may be oft-repeated, it does make for bracing adventures, and this novel is no exception. Not Alone is unputdownable and unfolds at an excellent pace, expertly moving between the present and flashbacks before the storm.

This is Sarah K. Jackson’s first novel, but she’s an ecologist by trade, specializing in botany. The realism and detail she weaves into the realities of survival by foraging and hunting in an environment suffering a very specific type of pollution set the book apart from other eco-apocalyptic stories. Not Alone deals in specific, daily challenges related to survival rather than in looming, vague threats.

Beyond just a story of survival, this is the story of the survival of a mother and son. Jackson captures the instinct, sacrifice, love and exhaustion of motherhood, filtered through a lens of survival and desperation. Readers of Not Alone are likely to be reminded of The Road, but the similarities end with the parent/child main characters. We get a much different narrative approach from Jackson, with Katie’s risk calculations and plans made available to the reader in her internal dialogue.

Not Alone is a realistic novel that does not seem to be written to infuse hope, but rather to provide a snapshot of a possible future and its attendant difficulties.

This book is well worth your time and deserves hours carved out of your day for a one-sitting read. Not Alone is available to the public May, 2, 2023.

A near-future environmental disaster novel. I was immediately intrigued and wound up reading it much earlier than I usually do (the release date is still SEVERAL months out)! But once I started I truly couldn't stop: a young woman is holed up in her flat and caring for her young son. A son who has never ventured Outside, out into the new version of our planet where micro plastics have seeped into the ground and rain burns.

A note, tucked away for nearly five years, leads Katie to believe her fiancé Jack might have survived that devastating day. That it's possible he's still out there, waiting for her. To reunite with him Katie must do the unthinkable: she and Harry must leave their safe home and head out into the world, unsure of who -- or what -- they might run into.

While not an action-packed novel -- there's a LOT of camping, a lot of foraging -- there's such a sense of unease and dread throughout this book that I was glued to the page. An incredible debut and I look forward to seeing what Jackson does next!

It’s been five years since a monumental storm, caused by environmental catastrophe, has swept the globe and destroyed almost all life on earth. Katie and her son, Harry, born after the storm, are eking out an existence in a London apartment. She forages and hunts what she can to keep them alive. Believing themselves to be totally alone, they are shocked by the arrival of another person. Is it possible there are more survivors out there somewhere? Could Katie’s fiancee, Jack, be among them? Even as her persistent cough worsens, Katie and her son set off in search of others, maybe even Jack. This post apocalyptic story isn’t filled with zombies or monsters; instead it’s the story of a mother trying to balance hope with the need to protect her son. Remarkable