Book Review: After the Flood by Kassandra Montag

Book: 6/100

Rating: 3/5

Summary: 100 years from now, rising flood waters have overtaken North America and now the only land that remains are mountaintops surrounded by open water. Strong willed Myra and her resourceful seven year old daughter Pearl have been travelling to different mountaintop colonies to trade resources and information.

Seven years ago, Myra’s husband stole their daughter Row as a severe flood took over their home in Nebraska. Since then, Myra has done everything she can to try and track down where Row could be, travelling to different colonies and getting intel on the different ships sailing the seas. When she finally gets a lead on where Row is, she ends up joining a larger ship of people striving for a safe and peaceful life and surprisingly bonds with some of the people she meets there. Will she risk everything these people have in order to find her daughter?

Thoughts: I was intrigued by the premise of the book: it does make you wonder if we’ll unfortunately get to a point where everything is underwater. Given the fires in Australia and melting arctic. Anyways, this book is less a gospel about the effects of climate change and more of a look at the lengths a mother would go for her child.

It kind of reminds me of the Handmaid’s Tale in a sense (circa season 2): is it worth endangering one of your children to save another? In a post apocalyptic world, do you jeopardize the safety of one of your children to take a chance to see/find your other child? I’ve always been interested in this narrative and one I find myself understanding a mother’s rationale in doing anything they can to protect their child, but not necessarily relating to it (SCRATCH THAT, I am a new dog mom so can totally relate now).

I found it hard to really connect with the characters throughout the story and I don’t think sea life and pirates are really my jam. However, I used to have the worst anxiety about the rising floodwaters because my grade seven teacher was obsessed with telling us how we would all die of climate change in our lifetime (maybe I’m being a tad bit overdramatic) but I surprisingly found this book not too stressful to read. So there are positives!

Also - I wrote this review calling the main character ‘Kyra’ the whole time before I double checked it so that just goes to show you how I felt about this book. It was just an okay read for me. Would I recommend this book? Probably not, unless you were into post apocalyptic survival stories about the lengths humans would go to get what they want.