Leave the World Behind

Thank you to Ecco Books and Bibliolifestyle for the ARC!

This book has been divisive so far and I love that people are having a love-it-or-hate-it response.

It's #SpookySeason, and surprisingly, LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND fits that bill. I don't normally consider literary speculative fiction spooky, but the way the plot unfurls in this one feels mysterious and unnerving.

While it's a very internal, literary approach to speculative fiction, I couldn't put it down. We start with Amanda and Clay, a white couple renting a luxurious home on a remote part of Long Island. Unlikable yet realistic, they feel like any white, middle-class married couple with kids. In fact, they could be your neighbors.

Then there's a knock at the door, and now we have another couple in the mix – an older and wealthy Black couple, apparently the homeowners. But is that true? Could this older Black couple truly own such an extravagant and gorgeous home?

I love books that transcend genre and I think that's what works so well here. We get a very internal glimpse of what humans think and feel in the middle of a confusing crisis. No one behaves in the way you want them to, or think they should. It's also full of quiet observations about racial microaggressions, class, and the human experience.

The ending is deeply unsettling for some and it leaves a lot open-ended, which I thought worked well. The entire book takes place in a very short timespan and from the narrow perspective of four people in a small, remote area. I kept imagining what was – or wasn't – happening everywhere else.