How to Survive Everything

WHAAAAAAT. WHAT WHAT WHAT. This book had me on the edge of my seat.

Haley, our fifteen-year-old protagonist, is used to not so much mediating between her divorced parents as choosing between them; it seems she can never make one happy without hurting the other, so the best she can do is toggle between them. It's not easy, but she's mostly got it under control - that is, until her dad kidnaps her and her younger brother. He brings them to a hideaway house with his fellow preppers and survivalists, where he believes they'll be safe from the upcoming pandemic. From there, it's fair to say things ... escalate.

Throughout the book, Haley veers from extreme to extreme in considering who to believe, whose version of reality to embrace: her father's (the pandemic-to-end-all-pandemics is upon us!) or her mother's (the world is just fine, thank you very much!). While this sounds dark, the book is at times quite funny - yes, there's trust issues and impending doom aplenty, but also crushes and hilariously consistent interactions with her parents, despite the chaotic circumstances.

And, of course, every time she thinks she's finally got things figured out - the rug gets pulled out from beneath her (and the reader!) again and again.

Plot-wise, I thought this story was propulsive and compelling. It probably could have been shorter - some of the back-and-forth, I'm-with-dad-no-I'm-with-mom started to feel stale after a while - and the writing was clunky in some places (Haley's voice sometimes felt less authentically and more stereotypically teenaged). But I'm overlooking that because I could. not. put. it. down. 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.

Thanks to Harper Perennial and NetGalley for my ARC.

So I was a bit mixed about this one, overall I quite enjoyed it and it passed the time. However, the narrator is really quite annoying and I never really warmed to her. The plot is a fairly simple, parental abduction with the added complication of a possible viral pandemic. It was surreal reading it with the news echoing the story but I guess that's the author's intention.