The End of the World Running Club by Adrian Walker- Book Review

After the self publishing success of The Martian, there has been a search for what the next big self published hit would be. Enter The End of the World Running Club as the next big contender to The Martian throne! The book has been picked up by Del Rey and has been brought to the masses to enjoy. Looking at the reviews, it is definitely a hit.

A giant meteor shower hits the UK and destroys most of it. There are a few survivors clustered together searching for others. Edgar is the father in one of those families. He had a shelter and his family survived the onslaught.

It is months later and Ed finds himself with a small group of survivors who now must be trained as military to survive. While out on a scout mission, a rescue group comes and takes Ed's family and other survivors halfway across the country. With his small group, Ed must traverse the landscape to get back to his family. He will run into danger, people that help, and more danger. Will he make it back? To get there in time, he and his group must run 20 miles a day, hence the name- The End of the World Running Club.

I am going to start off with my criticism to just get it out of the way. While I enjoyed the book, I felt this wasn't a huge addition to the apocalypse genre. There were characters that could have been in other books, i.e. the cooky guy who lost his mind a bit and still tries to maintain his home, the apocalypse journey was somewhat typical, and I wasn't a huge fan of the main character.

With that stated, I still have to write that I did enjoy the book. While there were certainly some slower parts, all the other ones moved fairly quickly. Ed was going from one place to another at a good clip. The problem was the slower parts were really slow, which took away a bit from the pacing. The characters were well developed and the story was a good one. I can see why a lot of people enjoyed it.

I thought it was a bit on the slower side. As stated, I did enjoy it, but would have a difficult time recommending it to others as the next great apocalypse book. I think it is a genre that is not only plentiful right now, but has some pretty tough books to best, such as The Road. It is too much of a popular genre right now that I wonder if this book might struggle a bit as it hits the main publishing house. It comes out in September, so we will see.

I gave it 3.5 stars.

*I want to thank NetGalley for the early release. I received it in exchange for an honest book review.*