This book was written before COVID 19, and I suspect that it has been revised in the light of what we now know as there are many aspects that are all to familiar. Or maybe I am doing the author a disservice and she really did have the imagination to foresee many things that most of us could never have imagined.

The subject of the novel is a great idea, but the author tries to cover too much, so many aspects are unconvincing. For example:

- with the very short incubation period of the virus, why does a mother shut her son in solitary confinement for months?

- with an immunity test available, why were testing kits not sent to the ship anchored off Iceland with the food and medicine supplies that were air-lifted in?

- why did expectant mothers not know the sex of the babies they were carrying?

- would there really be such a massive take-up of a women-only dating app?

I really wanted to like this book, and for about the first half I found it intriguing, meeting people around the world, coping as best they could, but the further in I got with so many characters and so many issues such as feminism, politics, gender touched on but not dealt with thoroughly, it became more and more unsatisfying.

I assume that the book will have a thorough proof-read before publication and that the following will be corrected: Catherine is offered a house in Devon which, two paragraphs on, changes to Suffolk, and later back to Devon. And please change 'recuss' to 'resus'!

A really well-written, eerily lifelike look at what would happen if a pandemic disproportionately affected men, killing over 90% of the male population.

Christina does a great job in telling a story through voices of many, delving into how a catastrophic event like this would affect all aspects of society.

A true page-turner, would thoroughly recommend.

In the current climate, where we are self-proclaimed Covid 19 experts, it seems practically impossible to judge The End of Men using the normal reviewing criteria, i.e. plot, characters, style, etc. The natural instinct is to assess its accuracy, written as it was about eighteen months before the current pandemic spread beyond Asia, like some set of Nostradamus predictions.
Christina Sweeney- Baird’s debut novel opens in Glasgow at the end of 2025. It quickly becomes clear to a female ED Consultant that there is a serious problem, when men present with flu- like symptoms and a 10% survival rate. The public health authorities disregard her warnings, and soon ‘The Male Plague’ has spread first across the UK and then globally. The government has no real idea what to do, civil servants are occupied fully, figuring how to spread unethical and unpalatable new regulations to the populace, and two scientists are working on a vaccine. Sound familiar? It does to me.
As I sweet talk myself off my soapbox, just a reminder that this fictional plague has far- reaching consequences- rationing, famine, war, break-up of countries, and is ongoing for five years before there is a vaccine breakthrough. A great deal of research has obviously been given over to these implications, discussed through the voices of the ED Consultant, a Social Anthropologist, a Civil Servant, several virologists and various other interested parties. But there are far too many of these voices to attach much character to any of them, and just when you get interested in how this will pan out, the discussion focuses more or less on the morality of selling vaccine rights, single sex dating apps and the implications for the LGBT community.
There is no doubt that this is the best time sales-wise for this book, but whether it would pass the other tests, plot, good characterisation and style otherwise is doubtful.
With thanks to Netgalley UK and HarperCollins UK

I was worried that reading a book about a global flu like pandemic while being on lockdown during an actual real time global pandemic would be too unsettling and macabre but I could not put this book down. It is so well written and the characters were all very relatable. It made me laugh and cry at times but totally absorbed me. The fact the author wrote this in 2018 is quite spooky as there are many similarities but the pandemic in the book is much much worse so that is quite comforting. The virus only affects males but can be carried by women so quite soon the world is in a perilous situation as men hold most senior jobs and positions of power when they all die quite suddenly how will the world be run. As well as looking at how individuals and families are changed by this virus it also looks at society and the way we live our lives. A really fascinating read which really made me think about society, grief and politics.

A confronting book particularly being in the midst of a pandemic! I did enjoy the way that the author foresaw the future, the ways in which society and science fought to overcome the effects of the pandemic and the deaths, the political maneuverings going on behind the scenes and how the health service (and its workers) deal with everything. I would read more by this author. Recommended.

So, written in 2018, this book is a speculative look at the world if a pandemic struck. A flu-like pandemic. All over the world.

That depressing bit of foresight aside, this disease has a 90% mortality rate of all men that it infects, but doesn’t affect women. This means that men all over the world; dads, husbands, sons, coworkers, politicians, good men and the worst of men, died within days of infection.

The story picks up at the very beginning of the pandemic and runs through to what the world looks like after a vaccine has been found, much further down the line than it turns out Covid took (three cheers for science!).

What captivated me – suddenly women are needed to do the jobs that have been dominated by men. The world needs electricians, engineers and lorry drivers.
Women are promoted faster and paid more, technology evolves to suit female needs, fertility, sex and women’s health is viewed in a completely different way.
So many little issues are slipped in to the narrative that it takes a step back to realise the scope of what the author’s included.

The story is written from the perspectives of various women involved in the discovery of the disease and the fight for getting the world back on track. They’re all very different from each other (one of them is a tremendous douche) and this lets us see even more of the ways that women would be affected by this kind of situation.

It bears being said that this book isn’t ‘screw all men’, the world is broken by grief but the story explores what other impacts the loss of men would have on society.

"The End of Men" by Christina Sweeney-Baird is a gripping story seems much more realistic now than it would have a year ago!

In this narrative a virus breaks out that only affects men (though women are carriers), threatening the future of the human race, if a vaccine is not found in time. Once infected, male victims are overcome in a matter of days. The fabric of society needs to change very quickly as women are required to fulfill the roles of their stricken male colleagues. Of course, some women are more seriously affected than others depending on the composition of their family circle's which leads to further resentment.

The author has created a believable scenario with realistic characters, each presented with different problems due to their individual circumstances. I particularly enjoyed the post-vaccine chapters as people try to deal with issues in a female dominated world.

Great read - especially poignant during the times of COVID! I really enjoyed the different ways the pandemic was dealt with and how different countries re-built. I would highly recommend this book.

I have always loved dystopian novels, particularly ones concerned with the aftermath of a world-changing plague or pandemic, particular favourites including Emily St John Mandel's "Station Eleven" and Stephen King's "The Stand." I did wonder whether the events of 2020 might impair my enjoyment of this genre going forward, but I'm happy to say that doesn't seem to be the case: I love, love, LOVED this beautifully written novel with its intriguing and original premise: a super-flu with an almost 100% fatality rate, but only in men.

What follows is the gradual unravelling of how a world adapts and changes - some of which is eerily familiar given the events of the last year, and some of which is pertinent only to this particular plot, ie, how a society can continue to ensure the functioning of certain sectors which were predominantly staffed by males, such as security, refuse collection, and police departments; how dating and procreation can work in a landscape where men are vastly outnumbered by women; how the LGBTQ+ community is impacted, etc.

I loved how the narrative unfolded on different continents and via different narrators, and also how each character's arc was completely unique, even if there were certain similarities across the board. This is such a thorough and well-told story, and one that deals with genuinely intriguing questions, even as it completely fulfils its brief of being a page-turning thriller dealing with a global pandemic and mass infection.

I couldn't put this book down, and will absolutely recommend it to everyone I know. A fantastic novel, and I can't wait to see what this author does next.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher, who provided me with a free ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Readable enough but disappointing the both the scientific and social oh local implications of the plague. It didn’t really stack up. Plus too many narratives to follow and no real engagement with any of the characters

I was really intrigued by the premise of this book: what would happen if there was a virus that wiped out much of the male population? The author makes it clear that the book was drafted before the outbreak of Covid-19 however many readers will find it hard not to draw parallels when the real virus has a higher rate of severe illness and mortality in the male population than females. In a way, I think it is unfortunate for the author that the global pandemic hit as she was writing this book as the general population will be more aware of the science of virology and genetics than previously.

My background is in physics so my biology knowledge is not the strongest however I found myself puzzling over one character's explanation of why it appeared to take 135 days (p160) for scientists to be able to explain that the vulnerability of males to the virus was related to the fact that they only had one X chromosome. The character then went on to use male twins to explain why only 10% of the male population is immune and claiming it was "Basic genetic logic." (p162) I hold my hands up to not being a geneticist but if "the Plague requires the absence of a specific gene sequence...present in the X chromosome" and only "9 percent of men" have the necessary protection, this implies that each X chromosome has a 9% chance of creating immunity. For women, this probability does not increase to 100% because they have two X chromosomes. If the above 9% is true then I would assume that the immunity rate for women is double (as you only need one correct copy). As all women were immune it would have made more sense for the vulnerability to have been coded into the Y chromosome with only 9% of Y chromosomes conferring resistance. This theory is undermined by the explanation of finding that "identical twins were both immune but their father was not [and a] set of male fraternal twins has an immune father but only one of the twins was immune".

This, unfortunately, wasn't the least of my science-based confusion. I could perhaps go along with the A&E doctor who was ignored (presumably for being a hysterical woman) at the beginning of the pandemic but much of the early part of the book implied that despite the fact men were dying in ever-increasing numbers, the pandemic wasn't taken seriously. There are numerous papers etc that discuss the fact that historically the medical community has focussed predominantly on health concerns that disproportionately affect men. For a modern-day comparison, one could point to the immediate interest in treating 'Long Covid' compared to the response to the arguably similar conditions ME/CFS which predominantly affect women. Towards the end of the book, there is a brief reference to advances in the treatment of endometriosis etc however this seems poorly extrapolated to the global response throughout the novel.

I was also surprised that the author thought it likely that the source of the pandemic would have been sought out by the same A&E doctor a long while later. Here again, the author is likely to be scuppered by the public's unprecedented access to information on a global pandemic. Genetic sequencing of the virus usually gives researchers an idea of what species the virus mutated from even if Patient Zero is never identified and it is one of the first things that researchers will look at.

The final section imagines how the world would be once a vaccine was created and I found this equally bemusing. Perhaps I am alone here but if only 10% of the male population was left, I find it hard to believe that there would just be a "lottery" or another system for women to have a form of IVF without some form of compulsory sperm donation program? Maybe I missed that part but I would have thought a priority would have been acquiring adequate sperm to repopulate which may have lead to potential human rights infringement protests from males who wanted to retain choice. It was unclear to me why only China would have split into 12 independent states and the Moldovan women would have chosen to imprison all the remaining males for participating in sex trafficking (this seemed particularly broad sweeping). Instead, those with traditional families and immune husbands seemed to carry on as though nothing had changed whilst the risk of population collapse lingered. It also came across that many women were happy to switch to single-sex relationships, as though sexual preference/orientation is purely a product of your environment. If this plotline had been switched to imply the remaining gay men became heterosexual, would there possibly be more raised eyebrows?

Ignoring these scientific logic flaws, my biggest gripe with the novel is probably that even though the author attempted to tell the story of the pandemic from a large cast of characters' perspectives, they all ended up sounding very similar. This meant that I was constantly having to try to remind myself which character was which even though the names and cities were listed at the beginning of each chapter. As far as I remember, there was one male character perspective and the rest were females that seemed to be from very similar socioeconomic backgrounds. I felt as though the women were also of similar ages with a heavy emphasis on how desperate these women are to have children. There lacked the nuance of the perspectives of straight women who chose not to have children for example.

I did read to the end but I think this novel can be summed up as "not for me".

The foreword of this book states that the author wrote this book in 2018, which in our current pandemic situation all around the world seems remarkable as to how many parts of the pandemic in the book actually came to become reality just a short while later.
Parts like global travel being blocked, wearing masks, money and jobs becoming obsolete etc. were things that couldn't really be easily contemplated a short time ago but have been accurately predicted in this.
For that aspect of the book, hats off to the author.
It does make you wonder how much more of an impact this book may have had, had it actually been released before everyone is experiencing some aspect of Covid-affected life. It would have had a much greater impact I think had I read this a year or two ago.
For the actual story-four stars from me. It does jump about a bit too much over a few too many characters so that you don't really share their grief, joy etc to the extent that it could, or perhaps should, have been felt. You start getting interested in a character and then the book completely shifts ahead in time and focuses on somebody else, which was a bit frustrating at times. That along with some of the newspaper/podcast type chapters, which don't really come out properly on Kindle format, were my only complaints.
However, a recommended read from me. Thank you as ever for the ARC.

What a cracking page turner that really sets the pace from page one and keeps going. Reading this in the middle of a pandemic just gives that extra bit of interest and perspective. There is realism with how the deadly make plague was mishandled and then blamed, that we all can relate to. There is the relief that covid is nowhere near as deadly as the make plague. And the stories of individual loss, gains and how the world evolved in a new order to cope with the changes just keeps the reading light on way after bed time.

It begins in Glasgow - a flu-type virus, fatal to almost half the population. Like any successful virus, it spreads in secrecy, jumping from victim to victim in the early days of infection, spreading asymptomatically and being passed from friend to friend, colleague to colleague, parent to child.

By the time the symptoms emerge, it is too late. This is a virus with almost a 100% mortality rate for those in one particular group. Unfortunately, that group makes up almost half the world’s population.

Told through a series of vignettes, the novel charts the course of the virus as it sweeps across the world, and the human costs and achievements of the battle against it.

The narrative is genuinely heart-breaking at times , but The End of Men is by no means a one trick pony. It’s also a story of determination and accomplishment, of over-coming barriers, and of societal change. There’s maybe a small amount of revenge, too – I think I’d find it quite satisfying to build a world where men were forced to endure the attitudes and attentions that have been foisted on women all this time.

Sweeney-Baird actually wrote this in 2018/19, so it’s complete happenstance that we’ve ended up with a real-life flu-like viral pandemic that adversely affects men more than women around the time of publication. I’m not sure whether that means more or fewer people will buy the book (it’s slated for publication in
April 2021), but I found it compelling enough to read over a 24-hour period. Hopefully, by April we’ll be far along enough with vaccinations to allow The End of Men the exposure it deserves.

I received an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was nervous going into this book - was reading a book about a global pandemic really the best option during a global pandemic? To begin with, I worried that no, it wasn’t a good idea. There were too many parallels between the real world and the novel (though the plague in the book so infinitely worse than our current situation).

But as I continued reading I was surprised, heartened and pleased to see that this is a book about hope. Yes, it’s about grief, devastation, the destruction of everything we know, but that’s only half of the story. It’s also a story of rebuilding, human connection, love and striving for a better future. It’s a story of human ingenuity and the best, and worst, that extremes bring out of people.

More than anything, it’s a well-written, emotive and powerful book. The characters are all well formed and the breadth that the author covers is admirable - not just how people cope with the death of so many husbands, sons, brothers, fathers - but also how this affects parenthood, politics, international relations, tech, LGBTQ+ rights, education and so much more.

Reading this book at the moment might seem off putting to begin with, and I won’t deny that the opening third of this book bought me to tears and horrified me on several occasions, but for me, it was worth powering through.

Slap bang in the middle of a global pandemic, we get a book about a global pandemic. It is interesting to see the ideas in the book and how they compare with the reality of living in a pandemic.

The style let the book down for me a little. It is essentially told in the first person but with several different characters each narrating parts of the story, often in podcast, blogs, or other writings. I would have preferred a different style but you get used to it as you progress through the story and I was keen to see how the fortunes of the narrators turned out.

Well worth a read.

A brilliant and insightful look into the not so distant future. A plague hits the world which affects only men. When half of the world's population is dying, what do women do?
Each chapter from different points of view all weaving together makes such a wonderful tale. It has an essence of Max Brookes 'world War Z' and I was enthralled.
Each section is told with a distinct voice and advances the story. Not all women are heroes and not all those who survive are worthy.
Thoroughly enjoyable.

2025. A mysterious virus breaks out in Scotland, a deadly illness that affects only men. Will a vaccine be discovered before it wipes out the whole male population?

I wanted to love this book soo much. The premise was fantastic and right up my street, but unfortunately, I found myself in the minority that didn't enjoy it.
The main problem was the multitude of characters; there were so many of them that I actually lost track and therefore couldn't connect to any of them. The story didn't simply follow a few perspectives but also included newspaper articles and diary entries, which might work well for world building but makes for a very confusing read. I have read a few books in this genre that use the same idea, and sadly it just doesn't work for me.
The timeline was jumping forward multiple times, and that was another thing that stood in the way of me engaging with the characters.
As I said, the premise is great but I just didn't find it was executed properly.
I hesitated between 1 and 2 stars, but couldn't justify the higher rating based solely on the premise so sadly I had to go for 1 star.
However, at the time that I write this, mine is the first 1-star review, so by no means rely on my opinion.

This book is fascinating and frustrating but ultimately enjoyable.

It is fast paced and the multiple treads keep it fresh and moving.

Due to the current circumstances it was close to the bone but would recommend.

This is an interesting and emotional read. In places it is scarily close to reality. Parts of this story seemed so real. I was fascinated by this story. It is memorable and thought provoking and worth reading.

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy.