Things to Do Before the End of the World by Emily Barr

Release: May 6th, 2021
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Penguin
Source: The WriteReads
Find it at Goodreads, Amazon, TBD __

Timely and powerful; the new coming-of-age thriller from the bestselling author of The One Memory of Flora Banks.

One minute you’re walking in the park, hiding from a party. Then you discover that the next nine months will probably be your last. Everyone’s last. You realize that you happen to be alive at the time when your species becomes extinct.
You have to decide whether to go with it meekly like you usually do or to do something brave, to live your last months with all the energy and bravery you can muster, to rage against the dying of the light.

Olivia struggles to live her real life as fully as she wants to. She plans out conversations and events in her head but actually doing them and interacting with other people is hard. When the news breaks that humans have done such damage to the earth that there are only nine months of safe air left, everybody makes bucket lists and starts living their best lives – everyone, that is, but Olivia, who is still struggling to figure out who she wants to be.

Then out of the blue, she contacts a long-lost cousin Natasha. Olivia didn’t even know the existence of her before. Natasha is everything Olivia wants to be and more. And as the girls meet up for their last summer on earth, Olivia finds Natasha’s ease and self-confidence affecting her. But what if Natasha isn’t everything she first appears to be . . . ?

About the Author:

Emily Barr worked as a journalist in London but always hankered after a quiet room and a book to write. She went traveling for a year, writing a column in the Guardian about it as she went, and it was there that she had an idea for a novel set in the world of backpackers in Asia. This became Backpack, which won the WH Smith New Talent Award. She has since written eleven more adult novels published in the UK and around the world, and a novella, Blackout, for the Quick Reads series. Her twelfth novel, The Sleeper, is a psychological thriller set on the London to Cornwall sleeper train.

In 2013 she went to Svalbard with the idea of setting a thriller in the Arctic. The book that came out of it was The One Memory of Flora Banks, a thriller for young adults, which attracted universal interest from publishers. Penguin pre-emptively bought it earlier this year. The global publication was in January 2017.
She lives in Cornwall with her partner and their children.

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Things to Do Before the End of the World Review:

I was smitten with the story from the first page. Imagine knowing that you only have one year to live your life. As someone who gets stressed over managing daily tasks, I can’t even imagine what a mess I would be. I’m sure I would regularly panic if I were in Libby’s situation.

I loved Libby from the start and could relate to her feelings. It’s challenging to feel positive when you see so much negativity around you. That’s why I adored Natasha’s character. Natasha is vibrant, complex, and unpredictable. I loved the instant rapport Libby shares with Natasha and how Natasha encourages her to get past her fears and shyness and live her life. I also liked the way the author wrote about Natasha’s psychic personality, which makes her intriguing.

The author beautifully writes the tale, where you don’t know how it would turn out. Some of the scenes that stood out for me were how Libby’s mother reacts when Natasha mentions Violet or when Libby’s attitude changes towards Natasha after what she hears. Moreover, I loved the various highlights the author makes of Spain, like The Prado and Prosecco, and highlights of Paris, like the Louvre. She brought the locations to life and made me feel close to the characters.

The author paces the story nicely towards the end, wondering how things will turn out for the two in Paris. Speaking of which, the last few chapters of the events that transpire in Paris blew me away. It became a roller-coaster ride that I didn’t expect and made the story so memorable.

Overall, I found “Things to Do Before the End of the World” beautiful and bittersweet with a mix of an adventure thriller, and I loved it!