“Leave the World Behind”

I picked Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam for one of my Book of the Month books. It sounded interesting and I’d seen it get some good hype on different book blogs.

It took me a while to read this book. I picked it up in September and finished it in late November. The story starts with a family driving out to a vacation home and settling in. Then some odd things start to happen – TV reception goes away, phone news alerts appear and then vanish. Then a man and woman appear at the door of the home claiming it is theirs and that they needed to flee the city because of some kind of catastrophic event.

There’s a looming sense of dread through the whole thing, and I think because of the looming sense of dread we’re all living in right now I had a hard time adding this dread to my mind. The book is well written and the plot is intriguing…I just had a very hard time getting into it. I ended up powering through and finishing it so it could have some closure in my mind…but I didn’t really get that either.

I’m not quite sure what else to say about this read except if you don’t mind a lot of ambiguity in a book, this would be a good read for you. If that bugs you (like it does me) this might not be your jam.