I was first intrigued by the title, but the moment I read the synopsis for this book I was very eager to read it. I thought the premise was very interesting. What happens when all the people who identify as white/European in the United States decide to unalive themselves and why?

I thought the book would focus more on the above question, but it ended up being about something much deeper, the reactions and trauma of the Black Americans who were left. I also thought it would be a typical apocalypse travelogue, with someone taking a road trip across a devastated landscape, and there is a little of that here, but most of the focus is on the lead character, and his feelings about the event that left people of color to pick up the pieces in the absence of white people. He has has some racial skeletons in his past and a daughter he is meeting for the first time. She has conflicted feelings too, since she is biracial, and most of the novel is about the two of them dealing with their grief for the people they lost, and the racial trauma of a world that was. Black Americans have some interesting and varying reactions, with some going mad, some gleeful, and others, like the protagonist, not knowing what to think or feel about what happened.

I didn't care for either one of the main characters very much because I simply couldn't relate to them, and the daughter is snarky, hostile, and mostly unlikable, but little by little, I started to understand the two of them, and I became immersed in the story. The lead character tends to overthink things, but by the end of the story, that turned out to be a good skill to have.

The is not a celebratory story. It is very melancholy and philosophical, like a film by Martin Scorcese perhaps, and I wasn't expecting that. It is also written in a semi-poetic style that I initially found it difficult to settle into, but once I got used to the rhythm of it, I found it slow, but otherwise well paced, with a mix of conversation, imagery, and the occasional action scene.

I was not disappointed at all, and will likely read any future novels from this writer, especially if they have an interesting premise, or maybe just a sequel to this one.