The End of Us / Sandra Proudman / Book Review

THE END OF US

Jules and Rico only have each other, but that's more than enough. They've been side-by-side through it all: burning summer heat, hungry winter nights, and long hours scavenging the Wasteland to find the salvage needed to keep them alive. What else can someone ask for, in this environmental post-apocalypse?

The future isn't entirely bleak. They have one thing to hope for: the lottery. The Oasis was set up generations ago by some wealthy billionaire, and it's provided refuge ever since. Limited spots means hoping for a resident of the Oasis to die. Limited spots means waiting for the random chance to be selected as the next resident. And this year, with three potential places in the Oasis open, Rico and Jules have more hope than ever before.

When Rico's selected despite all odds, he does the unthinkable: he gives his coveted position in paradise to Jules. But leaving for the Oasis means leaving Rico behind. And the world's last safe haven might not be as safe as they've always promised...

THOUGHTS

It's nice to finally get some dystopia that understands dystopia, you know? Understands the politics of it all. So The End of Us has that going for it, at least. This book is more character driven than anything else, which I don't think is a bad thing. In fact, I think it could have been a very good thing. But it gets caught up in several action-heavy sequences that diminish the more interpersonal story unfolding in these pages. It just wasn't that well balanced, which is a shame.

PROS

Worldbuilding Wonder	It feels like it has been a while since I've found the kind of dystopian world you can really get lost in, but that's what Sandra Proudman produces here. Sure, there are ultra-controlling governments in power (a necessity, I think, for any good dystopia), but the world itself is...devastated. It's a world that's grown too hot, the earth scorched and the air largely unbreathable. It's a world where scavenging requires protective gear, where the richest live in a climate controlled dome that keeps them safe on an inhospitable planet. This really exacerbates the Haves-vs.-Have-Nots of it all. The world itself is just not livable. Living outside of the control-zone means an early (and probably horrible) death, and living inside of it means playing by all the rules...
Balanced Politics	For once this year, I've found a dystopian book that has some real political weight behind it. The criticism here isn't new, but it is relevant. It's all about control, lies and obfuscation, promises that lead to more promises (and less freedom, at the expense of the outsider). It's really refreshing to find a dystopian book that cares about its political messaging. I like that Sandra Proudman also balances this political message with a more interpersonal message, with a love story. That's what this book is, at its core: a love story. The politics are happening in the background. Jules and Rico are actively involved in the dismantling of systems. But their story is more than just the politics of their lives; it's the striving for a life worth living, too -- a life that ends with them together, hand-in-hand, as they face a brighter future.
Fractious Factions	There are a lot of moving parts in this book. It's not so black-and-white as "government bad" and "regular people good." There is obviously a corrupt government structure in the dome itself, but there are regular people there, too, who just so happened to have won a lottery slot. And there wealthy people who bought their way in (or the way for their children/grandchildren to still be living there). There are the regular people outside struggling to get by and the governmental structures outside that take advantage of desperate people. There are violent gangs who are also working for the common man, and there are all the forces really pressing down on the main couple (good, bad, and neutral) that become antagonistic in light of the romance of it all. There's a lot happening here, a lot of little tensions and frictions, and I liked all those moving pieces and shifting loyalties.

CONS

Though the core of this book is and should be the fraught love story unfolding between Rico and Jules, in actuality, this romance gets a little... lost in the action of this book. It's far too high octane for the emotional development this plot demands. As soon as the lottery gets called, we're tossed into a world of cannibals and guns, blood and death, and there's hardly a chance to catch a breath because we're always going, going, going. There's no room for yearning here, and if there's any book that demands some yearning, it's this one.	High Octane
Everybody's bad all the time. Like, everybody. Except for our protagonists, of course. I said above that I liked the complicated nature of the forces at work in this book, and that's true. But that's more in theory than in practice. I'm all for a world full of shades of gray, but having everybody be mostly bad is... not that. Even down to the off-the-grid disenfranchised people being cannibals, for some reason, every single entity our main duo encounters is villainous in some way. Not just because they're hampering the romance (which would make them a villain in that plot, regardless of outright villainy) but because they're actually just straight up bad? I like the complicated web of players in this political drama, but I needed some more gray areas than I got.	Villainous Morals
Jules is a character who, based on her backstory and general demeanor, should be fairly jaded. And I'm not against taking a character like Jules, who should be jaded, and instead intentionally writing that character to be full of optimism and hope. That works really well with Katara's character in Avatar: The Last Airbender, for example. But Jules's youthful optimism in this book didn't read as quite that intentional. This optimism wasn't in spite of her circumstances. It wasn't really acknowledged at all, and in such a harsh world, it should be acknowledged. Jules feels very young because she is so consistently naive. She is constantly being shocked by things that are not at all shocking for the reader and would, theoretically, be even less so for someone who had grown up in her world. I think this naivety and innocence on Jules's part is a particular misstep in the crafting of her character when the primary audience is post-COVID teenagers, who tend to be far more skeptical of authority structures than previous generations. They've been put through some stuff in the past half a decade, and they're not nearly as willing to give authority the benefit of the doubt as Jules is. So I don't know why she was built this way or who she's meant to speak to.	Youthful Optimism

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐
4/10

Fans of Jeanne DuPrau's City of Ember will like sliding into this world of precarious technology and end-of-the-world philosophies. Those who liked the love story binding together Lauren Yero's Under This Forgetful Sky will like this new Latinx dystopia.

Details Publisher: Joy Revolution Date: October 13, 2026 Series: N/A Add to Goodreads Buy it HERE

Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own.