The Story Nook

By LM Juniper

I hadn’t been looking for new books, but what can I say? A zombie apocalypse with a trans main character written by an indie author? I’m in.

How We End by LM Juniper follows a trans man named Jake and a group of survivors making their way through a zombie apocalypse in the UK.

Plot

We start on the tube in London on a stopped train while the beginning of the zombie infection ravages London. The cause of the apocalypse is somewhat unclear, but from the start there are implications of military involvement.

Jake, an off duty tube driver, helps the group of people in the train car get out only to find the devastation above ground. A small group from the car decide to band together to get out of London and possibly find safety with Jake’s family.

This book is mainly about survival and character relationships, so while the group has an initial goal of making it out the last portion of the book focuses on their survival.

The book kept me engaged throughout, as we follow the ragtag group through various hardships. That said, I do not believe the main aim of this book to be plot driven.

Characters

We are introduced to two main characters, Jake and Liv, who are alternating POVs throughout the book. Over the course of the story we slowly learn more about them, albeit at the end I still have many questions. The remaining cast of characters we learn about mostly through sporadic dialogue. That is to say, for the majority of this book I did not really know who these characters were. There were sections where we are told something about a character with little follow up or surrounding proof. Even with the main characters, we don’t learn much about their backgrounds until the second half of the book. For a book about found family and character development, I found the slow reveal a little too slow.

One of the main problems with the method of character development is the degree of telling rather than showing. One of the main examples of this is Noah, who is supposed to have changed over the course of the story. We hear this, however, from Jake’s inner dialogue and a late night conversation between Jake and Noah. We ultimately do not learn much about the majority of characters, but in all fairness this may setup for future books.

Writing

Interestingly enough, the writing of How We End seems to change from the first half to the second. This does reflect the change of pace from tense escape to longer term survival. The writing shifts from dialogue heavy action to much more introspection. This does make sense for the arch of the story but it also results in the delayed characterization mentioned previously.

Final Thoughts

While it was a quick and enjoyable read, I believe How We End could benefit from more characterization and conflict. However, if you want a diverse zombie apocalypse story this may be the book for you. I will still read the next, and I wish the best for LM Juniper’s success.