Absolutely loved this title. I think it's relatable for a lot of people. The story is great and keeps you not only freaked out until the end but decently entertained.

This novel focuses on love, terror, and broken hearts in the midst of the apocalypse and fearing your boyfriend is the Antichrist. We follow Lucy Lawless and her band as we learn about each individual involved, and the story is told from the perspective of interviews. We switch back and forth from 1999, the prime of the band's run, to 2009- the year Lucy turns herself in for murder. I totally respect and love what DiLouie is putting down here. This book is very much VH1 Behind The Music meets an ID channel show, merging horror elements and gore in between. While I consider myself quite the music fan, this was a BIT too much for me. The amount of musicianship involved is pretty relentless, to the extent it took away from the plot and lost me a few times. The denouement also snuck up on me, personally, and the pacing suffered because of that. Many aspects of this were so fun, but it could have been shorter and achieved the same. I will say, the author's love of music shines and it shows how much he enjoyed writing this. Thanks so much to the publisher and author for the eARC!

The writing style of this book is so fun, and while it took me a minute to get used to it, once I did, I found the bouncing around from pov to pov was GREAT. You got real time reaction to situations and conversations between the characters. I do wish that I had held out for the audiobook because I can only imagine how well a full cast can tell this story.

Supposing that pre prophecy Jesus was just a person with a family, a job, people who knew him as just a person, this book declares that the same but opposite would also be possible. An antichrist could be born to this world, growing up as just a person… in the 90s, he did. Lily knows… I mean, she is his ex, after all.

This was so unique and off the wall. I absolutely loved it. The cast of characters is solid perfection. Each member of this band is so different, but due to their circumstances, they form a family, really. When the world is falling apart and they only have each other to save the world, they know they just have to rock on.

An awesome rock and roll read with a lot of heavy thoughts and ideas. With themes of predestination vs. free will, music, and theological debates about the nature of the Antichrist, this is no light read.

Characters are fully realized and the style of the text let's readers get a great sense of them all. I loved some more than others, Eric and Ramona deserved the world and so Garth is an ICON.

I would reccomend this read with the caveat that the people I would reccomend this to having an appreciation for pop-punk, rock and those music genres that draw the rebellious.

Romance.
Rock and Roll.
The Apocalypse.
Sounds like fun, right?
Not so much.

I commonly use the statement when I don't enjoy a book that it could be that it just wasn't in my preferred genre. Or that maybe it was a little too young for me.
My preferred genre is horror. And while I admit to be well above the age of a teenager, this one had moments when it hit. Unfortunately, there were so many other moments that just didn't do it for me.

Lily Lawless (Lillian Lawlor) wants to rock. It's what she lives for. Her dream is to front a rock band and make it big in music. When she meets Drake Morgan, she has found her partner, her muse, and the love of her life.
But there's something a little off about him. How he can inspire perfect strangers to follow him and do almost anything he asks. How, once they form a band, the audience always goes crazy and tries to kill each other. Little things like that.

Played for amusement, it could have been a fun ride. When I started the book, I had never read anything by Craig DiLouie, even though I have several of his books. This one sounded like it could be campy fun, sort of along the lines of We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix.
I honestly didn't have that much fun. I chewed through the pages, hoping to find something to grab onto that would make me change my mind.
The first 40%-45% was the romance? aspect of the story, plus meeting other characters and getting the band formed.
The next 10%-15% was finding out what happens when they play actual gigs, and the running from fans? hell-bent on killing them.
Then, per the title, we have a break-up and find out that the ex is really the Antichrist.
From that point on, we're having a mental theological discussion as to what to do with this information, while playing more shows and competing in competitions.

The entire thing is written in the revolving POV of each character, almost in an interview or documentary type narrative. I've read this done before and enjoyed it, but this seemed tired and overdone. The differences between characters was played out well, but they still seemed to be speaking with one voice.

By the time I made it to the halfway point, I wasn't chewing pages any longer, I was skimming for something to catch my eye and tell me that I was being too hard on the story as a whole.

All in all, Craig DiLouie is a great writer. He catches your attention and holds it. My biggest problem with the story was that I didn't want to learn how to pound a drum or make guitar strings scream. But there was so much attention to detail when it came to the minute operations of the instruments, it just bored me to tears. Someone who is more into the rock music culture might love this to the point of rereading it again and again.

The ending seemed rushed and a little too cosmic for my taste. Even a little saccharin.

As a whole, I'd give the story idea a 4. As written, 3. Because I liked the writing well enough to try the excerpt of How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive (this was the book I should have been reading and reviewing...great at just 25%), I would go to a 4. All totaled...3.5 because there were some thoughts and scenes in the book that I really did enjoy.

My eternal thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for allowing me to read this ARC and voice my thoughts.

4 stars

“A twisted tale of love, heartbreak and the apocalypse.”

In 1998 couple Lily Lawlor and Drake Morgan form punk band The Shivers. In 1999, Drake leaves the band, joins a rival band and the two bands battle it out at a battle of the bands in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Shivers go on to make it big with ten albums, six in the Billboard top ten, and the magic continues….right up until Lily all’s into a police station and confesses to murder in 2011.

The story of The Shivers is told through interviews with band members Lily, Malcolm, Ramona and Eric, and some additional interviewees, when they finally agree to speak in 2022 and 2023.

The book is done DAISY JONES AND THE SIX style, through only the transcripts of the interviews, a style that works really well for this book. It’s great and lots of fun, except for the end which is rather rushed. A solid 4 stars; there’s a lot to enjoy here and I had a good time with this and the well-drawn Shivers.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

I admit, I would have liked this a lot more if I was a bigger music person. As someone who casually enjoys music, it didn't fully hit for me. It took a while to get to the actual "horror" of the story, and read more like a band retrospective, which of course was the goal! All in all a fun story, but not entirely my jam.