I think what really got to me was the adamant refusal to use the word “zombie” - like, are we existing in a world where there has never been a zombie movie? Even if the rabids have fundamental differences, there’s no way any teenager would call them anything other than zombies.

Personally I found the “then” and “now” sections to be too fundamentally different (mostly because Flora was sooo different between the two) - and in the “now” sections especially, the characters’ decisions were wildly inconsistent from one page to the next. It was really hard to latch on to a clear direction or path of character development

Months ago, a rabies mutation overtook the world turning humans into "rabids," a.k.a zombies. Now, Flora leads her older brother Cain in a race to their childhood cabin in hopes of surviving and reuniting with their missing father. Along the way, they meet new and old friends, come to grips with their own buried truths and traumas, and learn what survival truly means.

This was a great story about survival and doing what it takes to stay alive. The pacing is thoughtful, giving space for characters to breathe and relationships to deepen, all while a quiet tension hums beneath the surface.

Overall, a solid, well-written read that many are sure to enjoy.

This was a great story about survival and doing what it takes to stay alive. The characters were good and felt like they could be real people. I really liked that it took place in the middle of the end of the world, rather than at the beginning. It was refreshing to see people who were already used to what the world was like, and they weren't learning how to navigate it. The story was fun to read and I really liked seeing the relationships form and grow as they faced impossible odds. The use of the past and the current day was well done, and really helped to shape the characters, as we got to see them before the world went haywire, and then see how they grow from that to people who can survive the end of the world.

The more I read, the more I liked the story. It got really sad and depressing near the end. I loved Biscuit (Spoiler: the dog doesn't die). I didn't really care about any of the romance happening. But I didn't have it either. I liked the way that OCD was represented and I liked the characters.

I have so many thoughts and feelings about this book??? Let's chat.

SUMMARY:
Zombies. Rabies zombies. Rabies mutates, infects a bunch of people, people start biting, uh-oh, apocalypse. Typical zombie stuff. Flora and her brother, Cain, are the only people left in an LA suburb. They get a radio message from their missing dad, so what do we do? ROAD TRIP BABY. On the way we meet various friends and enemies and cute dogs. The zombies are there too, sometimes. BUT ROAD TRIP BABY. Teen rom-com-dram road trip!

MY THOUGHTS:
This book really had me up until like the last act. But let's talk about the good stuff first, since there is way more of it than the bad.

Ok, so maybe Flora is me?? A little bit? Maybe?? I feel like a lot of people are going to really relate to her. First, I want to talk about something a little silly that meant a lot to me. As a person who is into horror, I have of course had the "How would I do in a Zombie Apocalypse?" conversations. As a person who is also Severely Mentally Ill, the answer is always, "Well, if the withdrawal from my meds doesn't get me killed, the constant panic attacks and general instability will probably not help." But here comes Flora! And she has my doomspiralling tendencies and inability to eat without being like. This is going to make me sick, isn't it.

AND SHE'S GAY. This is a book for the girls, gays, and theys, folks!

The zombie apocalypse in this book feels, to me, like a metaphor for two of my biggest fears. Ones I am sure a lot of other mentally ill folks have faced. The fear of "My parents are gone, how am I supposed to take care of myself now?" and "Oh no, how can I possibly find friends when everyone around me feels like a threat?"

Flora's journey throughout this book felt deeply real and personal to me. Which is probably why the last act lost me a bit. An external threat of supervillain level evil people show up. It was very obvious and heavily foreshadowed that they would, but it still felt out of place. Like, Flora's mental health and the literal actual zombies are enough of a villain for this story. Then the worst part of the book was the last like. Three pages. I am just unclear on what happened??? Like, a major letdown to have that be the ending of such a good book.

Quick side character rating!

Adan: 10/10. Best boy, I will take one (1) Adan please!
Biscuit: 100/10. Best girl, no notes.
Cain: 6/10. Kind of annoying sometimes not gonna lie. But by the end of the book you are like, if he dies, so will I.
Crisanta: 4/10. I don't really know why, but she bugged me a lot. Like dude. Just tell the truth. You are the problem.

Lastly, unfortunately the main romance kinda sucked. I just think it would have been better for Flora to not have a crush on Crisanta at the start of the book. She is just so down bad for her right away, and it really makes her overlook a lot of things she should question more about Cris. By the end of the book you see both Cris and Flora grow a lot, and it makes more sense for them to be together. Having them both be way into each other minute one doesn't give us a chance to see why they are a good fit. IDK, it just felt a little rushed. Maybe I am just a Cris hater, lol.

FINAL OPINION:
I really enjoyed this book overall. It is a great coming of age story. It felt very genuine throughout. I am sure it will be a favorite for many a teen. I definitely recommend it!

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Children's Publishing Group for the ARC! All opinions are my own.

Rated 4.75 stars on StoryGraph. If We Survive This is a YA sapphic zombie apocalypse novel. Since the rabies virus mutated and started turning people who are bitten into zombies (as far as I remember they are never referred to as zombies, but as rabids), Flora has had one focus: getting her brother through it alive. Her brother broke his leg at the beginning of the outbreak, so it's been up to Flora to keep them safe and alive. Now that his leg is healed, they are planning on traveling to a remote cabin that they vacation every summer at, hoping that their dad will be there after receiving a radio message from him. On the road, they find an old friend and her companion and join together. Flora suffers from pretty severe undiagnosed OCD (specifically contamination OCD), something that is both helpful and detrimental to surviving an apocalypse. Occasionally there are chapters the flashback to a day that took place the summer before, which served to shine light on Flora's OCD and family dynamics.
Flora's OCD is the best part of the book; it was a super interesting and different approach to the zombie apocalypse genre that made it feel fresh. I don't have OCD nor am I an expert on it, but I feel like it was portrayed accurately and thoughtfully, the author also having OCD. The plot was very engaging and I loved the structure; I liked that the flashbacks weren't to the beginning or start of the apocalypse but instead to a fairly normal day, it really showed a lot about the characters, their relationships, and highlighted the ways the outbreak has changed Flora. I do think the blurb is a little misleading, it said "The Walking Dead meets Yellowjackets," but it has only very surface level things in common with Yelllowjackets (Queer teen girls and technically humans eating each other, but zombies are very different from what happened in Yellowjackets), it is very different tonally and thematically. It seems pretty obvious that the marketing team said it was like Yellowjackets due to Yellowjackets popularity, not because of any real similarities between the two. Overall this was a very well written book that I would definitely recommend.
Thanks to Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, Feiwel & Friends, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

If We Survive This by Racquel Marie is a powerful and emotionally layered novel that starts with a quiet intensity and builds toward something truly unexpected. What begins as a grounded story about a group of teens dealing with the aftermath of tragedy soon evolves into a deeper exploration of survival, identity, and the complicated ways we connect with one another.

Marie’s writing shines in its ability to surprise without relying on dramatic twists for shock value. Instead, the story develops naturally, with each moment - big or small - carrying weight. The pacing is thoughtful, giving space for characters to breathe and relationships to deepen, all while a quiet tension hums beneath the surface.

While each character adds something meaningful, Cain stood out to me personally. I saw parts of myself in him - in the way he processes emotion and tries to find his place in the chaos. His journey felt honest and grounded, but it never overtook the story. Instead, it added to the larger emotional impact of the group dynamic and the choices they all face.

This is a novel that lingers - not just for the surprises it delivers, but for the emotional truth at its core. If We Survive This is heartfelt, raw, and deeply human.

i am totally biased because i love Racquel Marie and all that she writes, but if we survive this is one of the best books i've read this year and one of my all time favs of Racquel's. as someone who frequently says that I do not want to live during the zombie apocalypse, this book and plot was my literal nightmare but I still ate it up!! violently sobbed at the end. read it y'all!!!! a zombie/apocalypse piece of media that isn't created by a zionist!!

If We Survive This was an interesting apocalyptic zombie horror story. I always enjoy reading a plot where the main characters spend the book trying to survive while traveling from one place to another and that is the premise of this novel. The book opens with the main characters Flora and her brother Cain hiding in their childhood home from “ rabids” that have infected the majority of humans. The main characters decide to make their way to a cabin several hours away with the hopes of finding their father who was supposed to check out the cabin and come back for them but never returned. This was a quick read with a lot going on with no dull moments. I enjoyed the secondary characters that they travelled with. I wish there would have been a couple extra pages at the end of the book to wrap it up just a bit more but other then that I enjoyed reading this book!

Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan for the eARC access!

Wow I really liked this, I love zombies and lesbians, so lesbians + zombies?? Hell yea! Zombies are so sapphic coded I fear.. anyways onto the book.

I relate so much to Floras OCD, the intrusive thoughts that I struggle with daily were so well represented here on page, and I can’t even imagine being in a zombie apocalypse with contamination OCD (which I do not have) But boy was the story great, a girl just trying to protect her brother in the apocalypse, and some turmoil because of that- the younger sister caring for the older brother, who doesn’t believe she needs to be cared for nearly as much or even at all… then we join friends along the way, who seem to have a strange past they just won’t spill, until it’s too late.
Yeah this book was peak.

Wow! This one was a pleasant surprise. I thought it had a really well-written combination of scares, love, suspense, and humor. I wouldn't say it matches the Yellowjackets comparison in the description so much as The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later. I loved that it was set in California. I myself live in Northern California and have been to many of the locations the book takes place which enhanced my enjoyment even more. The author says in the Acknowledgements that she wasn't a horror person and somehow ended up writing a book, and I urge her to write more of them because she's dang good at it, not to mention it reaches a whole other audience you probably weren't reaching before. Thanks for the awesome read!

What. A. Book.

I feel like this was written for me! I am a huge fan of zombie/apocalypse stories, and I also have OCD. I've rarely seen OCD reflected so accurately and in such a relatable way in media, and adding the backdrop of this dystopian world (and all of the uniquely horrible things that come with it) elevated the read for me. Even though the setting of IF WE SURVIVE THIS isn't necessarily the "real world" (despite how dystopian our current world can feel sometimes), situations arose for the main character, Flora, that ignited anxious thought spirals that almost exactly mirrored how I have felt in my day to day life. Racquel does a seamless job of interweaving these anxieties into a story that is fast-paced, exciting, excruciating, and emotional.

I cared so much about the characters and their well-beings, and especially loved how complicated their relationships with one another were. The complex sibling relationship between Flora and Cain was portrayed so well--especially the push and pull between wanting to protect and wanting to feel protected. I cheered so much for the romantic relationships, yet understood that a world marked by death and destruction wouldn't allow them to be all sunshine and butterflies. Flora's relationship with her parents also struck a chord for me; I related so much to her fear about her parents' health, long before the rabies took over the world.

I really appreciated the early read of IF WE SURVIVE THIS and will be thinking about this book for a long time!

Months ago, a rabies mutation overtook the world turning humans into "rabids," a.k.a zombies. Now, Flora leads her older brother Cain in a race to their childhood cabin in hopes of surviving and reuniting with their missing father. Along the way, they meet new and old friends, come to grips with their own buried truths and traumas, and learn what survival truly means.

Racquel Marie's books never fail to make me cry. I am not very big into zombie or apocalypse media but when she announced this book, I knew I was going to love it and I was so right. The characters in this book are devastatingly real. Flora's struggles to live in an apocalyptic, gory world while trying to manage her OCD and anxiety; the beautiful queerness of almost every character, the way humanity and compassion lives on when the state of the world says it shouldn't: all of this creates a very real world and real group of people to not only root for but care and grieve for.

If We Survive This tells a story of darkness and grief and fear as survival becomes a hope instead of a guarantee. We see that survival means many things to different people, and that it is achieved in different ways. But hope is a present theme here as well. Hope and love and life. How you live means a lot more than how you die and, especially in the middle of an apocalypse, who you live on with can change everything. Found family continues to be my favorite trope.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I do believe sapphic zombie books are my absolute favorite so i jumped to add this to the list. So very glad to say it makes a wonderful addition! I loved the pacing of this story and the family aspects. Working through an apocalypse is hard enough but adding a family thats actually alive was refreshing. The OCD representation is something that I didn't know I needed. It made the story more real and relatable for me. I really enjoyed this story and brb gonna go make sure I read the rest of her work!

actual rating: 2.5. i relate to Flora on a spiritual level, and only a spiritual level. since, you know, we are not living through a zombie apocalypse. plus the fact that i would be one of the first to die if the zombie apocalypse. other than that, i found the book to be rather enjoyable. my only problem was with the dual timelines. the constant switching from then and now took me out of the story. it would have been better if it was just the now timeline as i did not see any substance that was added by the then timeline. the ending though??? chef’s kiss!! i loved it so much, it definitely saved the book for me.

The prose needed to be tighter in order to match the intensity of the premise, and the main character's choices felt inconsistent, as though her choices were being made to serve the plot rather than her character.

A zombie apocalypse novel with a lesbian POC protagonist with OCD? Yeah, obviously. Hand it over.

The blurb does not mention the OCD, but I could tell from about page 3 before it was even named (and I do applaud the author for actually using the word "OCD" on page). As somebody in treatment for severe OCD, I was beyond elated to see a girl like me as a protagonist in a zombie apocalypse book. This is definitely the first time I've ever seen something like this and I'm so happy.

If you think about it, OCD makes somebody both an excellent and a terrible candidate for surviving a pandemic of zombieitis, which in this case is a mutated form of rabies. Keep in mind I'm generalizing here, but people with OCD often have excellent attention to detail. However, they are terrible at thinking about anything else besides their obsessions and often have a hard time thinking logically. And that's the parallel we see in Flora: her sharp, obsessive mind helps keep her loved ones alive, while simultaneously pushing them away because she's afraid of hurting them or dealing with the grief of losing them.

A blend of The Walking Dead meets Turtles All the Way Down that kept me emotionally invested from beginning to end.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I appreciated this book's take on Zombies. It was a little different, but just as sad and dangerous a reality. The book moves at a fairly quick pace and is full of action, but it is certainly character driven.

Flora is an interesting character and I think her mental health was fully explored and developed here which gave her depth as a character but I also found her often foolhardy and mostly selfish, something she thinks she's grown out of by the end of the book but that she really hasn't. She does fight for and save others, but much of her actions are self-serving in some way. Though, again, flawed characters seem more realistic.

My one issue was the conflict here. Yes, there are zombies and those are an ever-pressing threat but a villain is introduced 3/4 of the way through the book and very little time was spent developing who they were. I think the book could have benefited from a little more of this.

Overall, a solid, well-written read that many are sure to enjoy.

If We Survive This is not just a zombie story. It depicts the rawness of a teenage girl grappling with the overwhelming amount of love and grief she has bottled-up in her body, all while attempting to balance both her physical and mental struggle for survival at the end of the world.

The summary of this book is what drew me in, but it was our main character, Flora, that kept me turning each page. Flora was not only an interesting and relatable main character, she was also complex. In fact, each of the main characters felt fully fleshed out and served a purpose. The only ones who didn’t quite meet that mark were our villains. Although the foreshadowing and lead up to their introduction was plentiful, their presentation and resolution itself felt abrupt and short. The true enemies of any zombie story will always be the humans. This story was no different, which was apparent in the way all of our main characters talked about their world. However, we don’t really get to see a descriptive example of this until close to the end. Because of this, the human villains of the story fell flat for me.

If We Survive this did a great job of forwarding the plot and helping us understand Flora. I’m usually not a fan of stories switching back-and-forth from past and present, but this one did a great job of it. The transitions were smooth, made sense plot-wise, and every dive into the past gave us insight into our main characters feelings and motivations. Flora had clearly changed since the start of the apocalypse, but her character had truly developed by the end of the book. Her relationships with her brother, love interest, and friends she gained along the way were integral to her change, but it was the relationship she had with herself that truly blossomed.

This is a great YA zombie book, but I wouldn’t necessarily put it in the same category as Yellowjackets, which is much more guttural in its horror and gore. Although, this book does have plenty of graphic, stomach turning depictions of zombie-killing, don’t be fooled! If you’re looking for a post-apocalyptic story centered around the fight to survive the outside world as well as your own mind, then I highly recommend giving If We Survive This a try.

Thank you to Net-Galley for providing me with an early copy of this story in exchange for an honest review!

First off I want to say that this book was so good!! I loved it because it reminded me of The Last of Us (an apocalypse game turned tv show) I wish there was more romance in it, but loved every page nonetheless. It had a good storyline and I liked that it went back and forth between timelines. I thought that was really cool and fun!! I think I found my new favorite genre!! I want to thank NetGalley, the publishers, and the author for creating this book!! And for letting me read it early!! It’s been on my TBR for a long time and I’m so glad and excited that I got a chance to read it!! Apocalypse horror is definitely a new favorite genre of mine!! I fell in love with these characters from this book. It felt like I was in the book with them. It was a very fun read and I can’t to read more from NetGalley!!