Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. She painted a very descriptive picture of the changing world and landscape but I think being American, some of it was so foreign that it didn’t always make sense. At times, the unwritten parts were difficult to work through and I found myself just giving up and going along.

Not Alone is the story of the harrowing journey of a mother and son, fighting for survival and a future, in a world ravaged by environmental disaster. In the present, Katie worries about plastic dust particles, toxic rainstorms, and encountering other people who might have survived. There's a tendency for these types of books to get a little heavy handed in their message, but with the exception of Katie lamenting a few times "If we all only went vegan! Katie forages while Harry, who was born after the storm and knows nothing of life Before, lives in relative fear of anything outside the confines of their small London flat.

Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. It's a beautiful book about a brutal reality, with a heartbreakingly vulnerable, authentic mother-child relationship at its heart. He provided instructions on where he’s headed and how to start the car he’s thoughtfully left in the parking garage.

It is also a powerful portrayal of a mother’s devotion to her son, that maternal instinct to protect him at all costs. We’re going to need that kind of hopeful grit if we’re to survive our own environmental catastrophe. Leaving aside the plausibility of death by microplastics, many of Katie’s concerns seem contemporary. At a time when stepping outside could kill you, Harry is kept indoors at all costs, never venturing beyond the door to their one-bedroom flat.

The car driving, all those chapters, they were driving but then stuck almost driving off into the water? We learn about Kate’s possibly stalling career and Leo’s plan to apply to acting schools against his mother’s wishes. I found it well written and I flew through it; even though relatively little happens except for the mundane rituals of Katie's and Harry's survival, there are real moments of heart-in-your-throat-action amid some of the more repetitive parts (this is mostly in the dust itself and the mask wearing, which gets repeated over and over).

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).Special thanks to Doubleday for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a review through NetGalley. Bodies continue to build up around them, inescapable layers of toxic dust hang heavily in the air and Katie is only getting sicker. Book tackles mental health head on and it does a pretty good job portraying depression, suicidal ideation and PTSD.

After having a few scares and finding an old note from Jack, she realizes he could still be alive and out there somewhere. Michaelides seems also to be dipping into the world of Edgar Allan Poe, offering an unreliable narrator who feels more like a literary exercise. Katie, one of those survivors, lives in isolation with her son Harry, who was born after the storm, in a flat outside London. The atmosphere of the novel, set mostly on this wild Greek island, echoes strongly the classical tragedies of Greece. Though she’s tried to protect herself from the poisonous dust outdoors, she’s beginning to feel her lungs burn when she exerts herself.

Katie is pained by her choices, and the shortcomings of the world she is raising her child in, and we can feel that emotion in the novel.