Member Reviews
I did not finish this due to falling out of the mood of wanting to read it. That takes away nothing from the author or the book - I just did not want to finish. I will probably at a later date. Thank you.
Good as I hoped it would be. The first half was more interesting to me than the second half and I wanted more closure on how one of the main characters was feeling towards the end. Other than that, no issues at all. The author did a great job of talking about some things without stepping on any toes. I've re-read parts of it, which isn't that common for me. All in all, very good.
This is a wonderful novel that I highly recommend.
Imagine waking up one morning and discovering that all of the people around you are stuck in "loops," repeating the same actions over and over again. Interacting with these loops can have catastrophic consequences.
The plot and characters are engaging and believable.
I truly enjoyed this novel and plan on reading more by Ann Christy.
4.5/5 Stars
This is a great story. It takes so many sub-genres and wraps them up into a delicious book! It is a science fiction book with heavy flavors of apocalypse, speculative fiction, love and family. It is unlike anything I’ve really read before and I enjoyed the opportunity to read something different in a genre I love so much. But like so many books in this “mold,” it held many similar themes such as dealing with survival, love, human nature, etc.. Ann Christy did a great job creating a very readable story & alternate world with all these very relatable themes.
This book kicks off with the protagonist, Coco. Living her life “post loop” as a teenager, just several years after an event changed the world as she and we know it. All the people around her are reliving just specific seconds, minutes or hours of their lives in a loop. A Groundhog Day hellscape! These people stuck in loops, called loopers can’t see Coco unless she disturbs them. And disturbing them causes trouble. Coco actually goes years without seeing another “real” person. When Coco finally meets people the story really kicks into high-gear. The slow layering in of characters is great and really gave me the sense to get to know them and what their situations are. The characters are incredible in this book, and it was easy to connect with them.
The book is told over several decades and from two points of view. a male POV (Forrest) comes in to join Coco a bit into the book. The introduction of Forrest is a point where I really got further sucked-in as he and his people have a very different take on things. The Coco/Forrest contrasting POVs make some very poignant parallels to society today.
The talk of physics and the concept of time were done really well. Similar yet unsimilar to how it is dealt with in the film, Interstellar, which I loved. The human bonds and challenges in family were also a real highlight in this book. The characters are also incredible. The world building is also so on-point. Christy does a phenomenal job of describing this “post-loop” world.
The story did feel slow in some parts. I might feel this way because I listened to it, which is something I rarely do. But even in these parts, the author did a great job with the story telling. There were also some confusing areas, when you’re trying to make heads or tails as to what in the world is going on with this world. But this just might have to do with my impatience, everything ended up understandable when I gave it time. A lesson for me to allow myself to be more comfortable with being uncomfortable!
I really connected with this book, and did so even more when I listened to the author talk about how she felt during the pandemic, when she got the spark to write this novel. She spoke of hugging her dad for the first time in months and standing in a line to vote. Those two moments really resonated with me in 2020, too. Her love for family and her I suppose sadness regarding how divided our society became really came out in this story. After hearing her talk about this, I gained a deeper appreciation for her and this book.
For lovers of sci-fi and speculative fiction this book is a must-read. It was full of great adventure and fantastic characters.
Thank you Netgally, Ann Christy and Campfire for the opportunity to review a this book in exchange for my honest feedback.
"The Never-Ending End of the World" is an emotional book of a woman who is trapped almost her entire life in a time loop. One day she wakes up, 12 years old, and the people around her keep repeating the same tasks, endlessly. Some loops are quick, 10 seconds or a couple minutes long, other loops can last for hours, like walking the dog or going to work for the day. Breaking the loop by touch or sound will cause the looper (is that even a word?) to attack and then vanish, most likely in death.
And Coco is trapped in Manhattan, one of the most populated areas.
As Coco grows, she slowly discovers others who are not trapped in their own loops and are searching to understand what is going on in the world. This is where the book changes, and we see the slow development of Coco from a girl, to a young woman, and ultimately to a more mature mother whose child may very well hold the key to understanding what is going on.
Although this book is very cerebral, with time loops and physics and fun, theoretical scientific theories of fourth dimensions and the workings of time, it's also a very human book, focused on family and friends and growing old in your skin. This, I think is where the book excels, and I found the ending of the book - which I was dreading at one point, knowing how it was going to end - very, very satisfying. If I were a crying person, I would have cried. I almost did.
So kudos to Ann Christy for an awesome read! And thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and author, for allowing me to read for review. I most definitely recommend Ann Christy!
I haven't read a good dystopian Sci-Fi in a while. I really enjoyed this one. It's a lot to wrap my head around but that is part of the fun.
I couldn't imagine being in this type of situation. I think the author does a great job with the story and characters. Parts of this gave me a Walking Dead vibe and I loved that. This would make a fantastic movie.
Definitely a good one for Sci-Fi fans. I sincerely appreciate the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy. All opinions expressed are my own.
This is such a clever premise for a book. It’s entirely different from any dystopian/apocalypse story I’ve ever seen, and it manages to be surprisingly horrifying in a way that lets it compete with any zombie apocalypse. That being said, the execution was a bit odd. There wasn’t as much tension as it felt like the story warranted? The stakes were clearly high, and a fascinating sort of political intrigue gets laid out across the book, but the actual tension was missing for me for a lot of the book. In the scenes where it worked, it really worked, but so many crucial moments got told in the form of a diary entry that a lot of the tension and drama got lost. Also, the story spanned a really long time. Which is fine because it gave it a very unique structure and, I think, allowed a story of parenthood and what we owe the world to be told that would be really challenging to tell if it didn’t span a lifetime. Unfortunately, it also meant that a lot of relationships sort of got pushed to the side because they got told, not shown. For instance, it felt like Coco and Jorge’s relationship just sort of got thrown in as an aside by Coco, but never really played out. And none of the side characters were really distinct in any way or given any page time. So this was a perfectly decent book with a really cool premise, but I think the structure needed to be tightened up a little.
This was a fantastic read, very exciting throughout the whole book. Unfortunately, I forgot to review the book when I read it, and now it has been a while and I've forgotten much of what I wanted to say.
I do remember that it was a very compelling and interesting read. The idea was something new that I had not come across before. Highly recommended!
An engrossing scifi novel. Coco is twelve when the world ends. She wakes up one day to find everyone and everything around her seemingly stuck in time loops. She quickly discovers that any contact with or sound made near a looper is to be avoided at all costs. After years of solitude and careful mapping of nearby loops, she knows that she needs to set out in search of food and hopefully other non-loopers. She can't be the only survivor. The world has been remade by this apocalypse, and it will never be the same again.
Wow, did this story pull me in. It spans such a large period of time (nearly 40 years), and does it so well. Meticulously plotted. Our two protagonists have clearly different view points, but are each compelling. The mystery of the loops and how they would be fixed (or not) as well as the look into how society reformed in this apocalyptic world kept me engaged in the story. I enjoyed the diary entries that started each section. They added extra dimension. This world felt realistic, even though it's so fantastical. Tons of emotion as the story reached its end. Definitely worth the read.
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Obviously, this review is too late, but I will say to the publisher especially, the structure of this book was very interesting, with both an account of the story paired with writings and reflections from the future. The concept was also intriguing, especially in a post YA-dystopia craze publishing world. I did however, DNF this book after around 41% of the way through because I found myself uninterested in the characters despite being curious about the setting. I think I would go back to it at a later date, but I don't often read books including pregnancy and motherhood, and DNF'd specifically after that appeared.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this arc.
I love the dystopian and post-apocalyptic genre so it’s no surprise I loved this book. I enjoyed it the most at the start seeing how Coco was surviving the Looping in terms of food and daily life.
Third person gets hate on BookTok but it’s the best way to write, in my opinion, and it made the excerpts of the diary entries more special.
This was dual POV but it wasn’t constantly change, it only changed a few times in the book and there were large chunks of the same POV at a time. At first I didn’t appreciate it and wanted to get back to Coco’s POV, but it was a good way to see the years pass.
The ending is something you could predict, and you (the reader) kinda know it’s going to happen, but it still made me cry a lot, and considering I barely ever cry, let alone because of a work of fiction, that says a lot. It was a good ending, it was understandable, sad, and leaves some wanting to know more about what happens, but I think it’s better to be left wanting than to have too much that you don’t like it anymore.
The Never-Ending End of the World is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel by Ann Christy. Coco Wells, the main protagonist, is a survivor of an event that divided the world into two groups. Animals and humans stuck in never-ending loops, destined to live the same period of time repeatedly, are known as "Looped. " They make up the majority of the population. The remaining humans and animals who are unlooped can move about and live normally as long as they avoid disturbing loops. Coco has been surviving independently for years until finally meeting unlooped others. The POV is then divided between Coco and Forest, who are on separate sides politically regarding how to live and interact with loops. The story spans several decades until a small group decides to get to the bottom of the "ground zero" event that caused the looping.
Christy does a great job with character development and world-building. The rules surrounding the looping are very complex, and the beginning of the book focuses on explaining this new world to readers. Because of this complexity, I found it challenging to connect and feel drawn in. It wasn't until about halfway through the book that I felt like the pace of the rising action started to pick up. I'm still confused about the ending and how the actions taken affected the story's resolution.
I do feel that the premise of the novel is unique and interesting. I rate this novel 3/5 stars.
I love science fiction. It is my first choice to read if I have a pile of books in front of me. This one is a fast read and a thought provoking one.
I will confess a weakness for books that present me with a puzzle. Here we have a gigantic puzzle. Coco woke up one Sunday morning and found her entire world had changed. That change was not for the better, either. Most all of the people had suddenly been locked into loops where they repeated some actions over and over again. Interfering with those loops was very dangerous, so Coco spent hours studying them. She recorded each loop: how long it lasted, what the person inside it did, where it was. With these maps she navigated the city she lived in. In the years she spent in her city she only met one other person not looped.
Eventually she left the city. First she found a kitten. Then she found other people. Soon she found a community. There seemed to be two schools of thought about those caught in loops. One camp cheerfully broke loops, thinking they were setting the loopers free since the people in the loops disappeared when the loop broke. The other school held that the loopers died so loops were to be left undisturbed.
Soon the communities produced children. Space became a concern, especially farming space. The question of what had happened to produce the loops began to bother the communities. Would the loops degrade and break on their own? Would enough of them breaking at one time cause a bigger catastrophe? The children seemed to have different relationship with the loops. Answers were wanted.
I can't tell you how the book ends. That would rob you of a very enjoyable trip. I liked the book very much. I think you will like it too.
I received a copy of this book to read from the publisher on Netgalley. I review every book I read.
It's a unique and thought-provoking take on the post-apocalyptic genre. I loved the concept of the loops, and how it created a world that is both familiar and strange at the same time.
I also appreciated the characters in the book. Coco is a complex and relatable protagonist, and her journey is both inspiring and heartbreaking. The supporting cast is also well-developed, and each character has their own unique motivations and goals.
Overall, I thought The Never-Ending End of the World was a very well-written and engaging book. It's a must-read for fans of science fiction and post-apocalyptic stories.
Post-apocalyptic/dystopian is a genre I almost never read, however, the premise of this story was super interesting as it included time loops. Time Travel, time loops, dimensions etc. is on the other hand one of the genres I do read.
So imagine my joy at discovering an interesting story based on one of my favorite themes, while exploring a genre I never read - a something old-something new bookish twist! lol!
This book is interesting, with a complicated plot that made me think, twists that made me pay attention, and experiences that the characters had that made me wonder too....
Overall, this is a good read, give it a try for a story that just pulls you in :)
Note: It’s been days since I finished this and I still think of it at least once per day. I wish I had never read it so I could read it again the first time. Definitely in my Top 10 for the year.
Story: Coco is stuck navigating through the streets of NYC filled to the brim of people stuck in time. If she makes a sound, or bumps them - nay, if they even notice her - not only will they attack her, but then they disappear. Where? She doesn’t know, but she does her best trying to survive while navigating this human minefield every day.
Review: I’m not sure why this book hooked me so much. Maybe it was the author’s caretaking? They were all put into horrible circumstances and then tried to be the best version of themselves, even the leaders. And I have always enjoyed my scifi with a side of philosophy.
The thing is, as a reviewer I get to see how Covid writers dealt with their isolation - and right now you can see the Covid experience written all over many of the books being published. Some came away from Covid and went political, or full on pandemic terror (Red River Seven, I love you), and some authors (like this one) came out of the experience doing a deep dive in what it’s like to make life or death decisions for strangers. Our author asked all the right questions, and gave us insight into both sides of the philosophical battle - and did it with honesty and above all, love.
I hope one day if I’m in a similar circumstance, I can make the right choice - and if I make the wrong one, be able to forgive myself for doing the best I could with the information I had. Can we all say the same now for the circumstance we all just lived through?
(Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this honest review.)
This post-apocalyptic novel started off intriguingly and just got better and better, with an ending that was so emotionally and intellectually gripping. I loved Coco’s journey from a precocious teen to wise adult in this dystopian world, and the secondary characters were also well-written for the most part. The book’s premise is unique and very well-thought out. I highly recommend it to fans of sci-fi and dystopian fiction.
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an arc.
This book has a very cool, original concept, great characters, and some exceptional world building (perhaps too much at times though.)
The story is told through the journals of two characters, the first of which, Coco is trapped alone in Manhattan for thirteen years after the world becomes caught in time loops.
The concept of the loops is fascinating. Animals, nature and people are all caught in them. Some repeat patterns (like pouring a bowl of cereal and eating it, over and over again for decades), some just flicker stuck in one moment in time like a living Gif.
I particularly liked the idea that if you interrupt the loop, the looper violently acts out and then dies. Now only is this new world curious but also dangerous, which gives the plot some momentum and keeps the stakes high.
Hopefully the premise I described above makes sense to you. If not, this may not be the book for you as we dive deeper - WAY DEEPER-- into the concept as the book continues. What does the loop mean for animals? Is it ethical to break the loops in an attempt to save the world? What happens if loops connected to nuclear plants degrade or are interrupted?
The book isn't terribly science-heavy, but it you do need to do some work in your brain to hold all of the facts in this new world together. For some, that may seem like work to read.
Personally, I found this to be a cool book. Docking a star only because I felt like it could use more editing. There were a couple of spots where things were explained twice. For example, we, the reader learn how next generation of kids are reacting to loops. Then, a few chapters later someone re-explains these same facts again. I also would have enjoyed more showing and less telling (through debates) when it comes to discussions about Seekers and Choosers.
These are small personal quibbles though. Overall, a great read. Thank you to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Finally, a new concept for a TEOTWAWKI book! Interesting characters, good storytelling, and a suspenseful plot. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read and review!
Post-apocalyptic/dystopian stories are always one of my favorite reads. This was my first Ann Christy book, and boy, am I now a fan❤️. I loved the dynamics of this book. Most of the world being stuck in a constant loop was a concept I haven't seen much in my reading, but it was also broken down well enough to not be completely confusing. The characters were endearing, and the ending was one I will never forget.