Not Alone

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It’s designed to make you cry at the end, but almost all the twists and plot points were over telegraphed or cliche that it was hard for me to care. Maybe I’m bias, since I have a soft spot for this sort of thing, but I’m not sure if it’s possible for neurotypicals to really understand what Katie was going through and how her trauma made her react to certain scenarios. Currently, there's a crop of climate ravages (not that it's new--The Day After Tomorrow and Waterworld were examples of disaster Hollywood blockbusters). Leaving aside the plausibility of death by microplastics, many of Katie’s concerns seem contemporary.

Apocalyptic outcomes are on the horizon, and so many speculative narratives in recent years have projected end-of-world scenarios tied to the calamity. It is also a powerful portrayal of a mother’s devotion to her son, that maternal instinct to protect him at all costs. She's creepily jealous and possessive of her son when an older grandmotherly woman offers to watch him for her and tries to prevent anyone from telling her kid anything about the world.Jackson's debut novel is stronger when it's surprising, as in the scenes where Katie muses on the strange beauty of the new world. As people who know what the outside world is like, who can name what things are as we come across them, who understand how to navigate outside, it was an experience to follow Harry, who had a massive lack of understanding of anything outside of the flat, leading to a lot of fear and intrigue. Towards the end, I was feeling an impatience to reach their final destination and find out if Katie’s fiancé was alive after all, but once I reached the end, it all felt worth it. Katie is a "mama bear" in the most extreme circumstances imaginable, with her fierce love for Harry and desire to protect him motivating every risky, impossible choice she has to make.

They’re almost never in significant danger or distress, so any high stakes scenes were low tension because I knew they’d get out of it with just a little scratch. Not Alone is a sharp exploration of environmental apocalypse—and a celebration of pure, boundless love that can survive anything. We’ve all heard of microplastics, and Jackson expands on this fear even further with nanoparticles small enough to pass through cell walls.The bond between Katie and Harry was beautiful to read, and you could really tell how much they loved each other, how Katie would do anything for Harry, and in turn how he also looked after her despite his very young age.

Katie is a weak little woman who can't even bear to think about the past in any way and spends half the time mooning over her lost fiancee that she needs more than life itself, apparently. After a huge microplastic storm separated her and her lover and killed countless people, all she knows is how to survive--and resources are depleting. Even when the author is obviously trying to add more complexity to them, like giving one of them a kid, it comes off false. An exhilarating debut novel, tracing the harrowing journey of a mother and son fighting for survival and a future in a world ravaged by environmental disaster • “ Not Alone kept me breathless with tension… [A] gripping adventure story.

North America was ravaged by the storm, and the toxic dust damages infrastructure, but otherwise Katie is unaware. And although it feels as if there’s nothing left to live for and your heart may shatter a bit along the way - there’s still so much hope for a better kinder future for these characters. In a world very close to our own, a mother and her young son desperately fend for themselves in the confinement of their one bedroom flat. He tells her of other survivors, especially in cities, and talks about getting a greenhouse working. Five years ago, a microplastics storm ravaged the globe, decimating most of the the population and leaving the few survivors sick and struggling in a toxic post-apocalyptic world -- where the simple act of breathing outside air could mean death.

The situation is scary as I could really see this happening to us, (although not AS crazy and bad), it hits close to home for sure. The story weaves through their journey, but also looks into Katie's past, so we get a glimpse of who the important people in her life really were, including Jack. I wanted her to succeed, to make it, the same way I want that for me, the same way I want that for my friends, and there aren’t a whole lot of books or media that have pulled that feeling out of me.I will not tell you whether they find Jack, but I will tell you that Sarah Jackson manages to keep hope alive for the reader and in the end, that desperate spark of hope is rewarded.