Interesting concept! Thought the idea was well-done and well-fleshed out. In the current climate, it was an intriguing perspective to consider.

* spoiler alert ** 4.25 stars

This is going to be a book I recommend a lot... it had me sitting down and reading it at every possible moment.
From the initial pages of discovering there was a virus that moved so fast,and killed so many.. the knock on effect.
It genuinely had me thanking my lucky stars we hadn't had things so bad.
Each chapter,headed by a different character,brought a new way to see things,be it a complication or a reason to hope.
Bookclubs are going to need extended time to talk through this one.
For me,it tailed off towards the end,but once a vaccine was found,that was to be expected.
It's definitely going to be in my books of the year.

Talk about timely! I'm not going to lie. Reading about a fictional pandemic during a pandemic is uncomfortable. So much is familiar. The news, a virus, but it's far away. The gradual realisation that it isn't going to just go away soon. Lockdown. Panic. But this virus has a fatality rate of 97% - and it only targets men, although women are carriers.
Patient zero enters a hospital in Glasgow. Two days later several men come in with high fevers which spiral out of control. Luckily the doctor on duty realises what is happening and warns the authorities - only to be ignored. And in just a few weeks the virus has spread and the world will never be the same again.
Told from the points of view of many different survivors from all over the world across the span of several years - doctors and scientists, politicians and academics, mothers and widows and wives, The End of Men is about unbearable panic and unbearable grrief, a world we understand coming to an end. What does life look like when men make up a tiny part of the population? How do different countries cope? What measures do they take to protect the boys that are left and what scars will that leave?
So timely, absolutely, and very very readable. The End of Men is terrifingly believable, gripping and thought provoking.

If I'd read The End of Men six months ago I would have described it as set in a dystopian future. Now we are living in the midst of a global pandemic, suddenly what happens in this book doesn't seem so hard to imagine. Instead of Covid-19, imagine a plague transmitted from animals to humans, and this deadly virus kills 90% of men who catch it.

The pandemic aspect of this plot is now all too easy to relate to, and this alone made it a fascinating and compelling read as I spotted parallels between the world gripped by a pandemic as imagined by the writer, and how the world has been in 2020. Thankfully Covid-19 is nowhere near as deadly as the Plague. The impact of the majority of men in the world dying is told from different points of view, from both personal and professional perspectives. This new society ran mostly by women is a fascinating concept about how the world had to adapt. The End of Men is beautifully written, unputdownable and as much an anthropology as it is a thriller.

At the beginning of the pandemic I couldn't stop thinking about fiction I had read on this subject. These gave a horrifying perspective on what it might be like to live through a disease sweeping through the world. Thank goodness that so far at least what we have endured is nothing like the horrors described in that fiction. The End of Men has an interesting premise: the pandemic hits only men, killing 90% of them. A truly horrifying prospect. I read through it very quickly, it is very readable but it has flaws.

For me the major problem is the way it is structured. It gives chronological accounts of the experiences of a number of women, The idea is that it is a social anthropological narrative written by an academic of true life experiences of the pandemic. However (mercifully) it doesn't come across as an academic text in any way whatsoever and that's fine in my view. What isn't fine is that it leads to a very disjointed account of the fictional pandemic. We are taken from country to country, woman to woman to hear about their experiences and there are just too many of them with not enough differentiation in their voices to make a coherent narrative. I gave up trying to remember who was who and this became problematic. As the characters didn't really come alive then what happened to them seemed less important. There are many tales in here which should have had me sobbing but I remained untouched by them as the people did not seem real.

There is much to be admired though. The author provides thought provoking asides such as more research being done into diseases such as endometriosis which affects only women as well as cars being modified to be more suitable to the size and shape of women. This serves as a sharp reminder of what a male dominated world we currently live in. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

The foreword by the author is really insightful, little did she know that her book would very closely mirror the pandemic that the work is currently battling.

The End of Men tells of a disease that wipes out 90% of the male population and It is told from multiple female perspectives, doctors, parents, wives and scientists.
At times it is unbelievably raw especially when we read about a woman who loses both her husband and her son. This had me thinking how many male members of my family I could potentially lose if the disease was real.
The story is very thought provoking and there are certain aspects which have the ability to make you quite cross - without divulging any of the plot - this is towards the end of the book.

Very well written and enjoyable to read.

Well, this book will break your heart. It’s story of a plague that all but wipes out the male population feels eerily familiar, and at the same time a horrifying tale of what could have been. The perspectives of the survivors portrayed in this novel are brutal, terrifying and utterly heartbreaking. But that didn’t stop me devouring this book, reading late into the night desperate that somewhere there would be a chink of hope for the characters. Well written and completely unputdownable it’s a story that will resonate with so many of us. My only slight slight pedantic issue? The reference to a matron in a Glasgow hospital numerous times - matrons don’t exist in Scottish hospitals! But that’s definitely just nitpicking.

This book hurts. It takes your heart and squeezes, scratches, tears, and bites. It is so worth all that pain. "The End of Men" is beautifully written, with the plot sucking you in from the first few words. The characters cover quite a large spectrum and, with the differing (and similar) points of view, this makes the plot far harder hitting. You'll probably need several boxes of tissues for this one and should prepare to be shaken. Gut-wrenchingly, gobsmackingly, awesomely THE book to look out for next year.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advance copy to review. This review is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

I devoured this one in two sittings.
A disease suddenly appears in a Glasgow hospital. Amanda, a doctor, sees a pattern. Nobody listens to her and it spreads like wildfire. It kills only men.
Recently the news has told us that countries led by women have dealt with the coronavirus best. I kept thinking of that when I read this book. The writer doesn't pull her punches. You get attached to people and they die. It's devastating.
The women all survive and, as women do, they get on with it. The book shows us how much better the world would be run without men to mess it up.
It's thought-provoking and strangely reassuring. The world goes on even after a pandemic.

This is a likely book, given we are living through a pandemic. It’s a really interesting concept - men dying out - that is explored through the book.

I was intrigued about seeing how the world changed without men around I was also intrigued by the different survival strategies people adopted.

I cannot recommend this story highly enough! I was hooked from the start, the writing is incredible and the subject matter gripping. It’s so cleverly written from multiple perspectives that show the full range of the impact of the Plague on loves across the world. It’s gritty, emotional and thought provoking. I just found it fascinating to read the development of the story and to reflect on the changes at every level of society from individuals and families to professions, organisations and governments. The timing of my reading in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic perhaps made it more relatable and it’s uncanny to think that this idea of the authors which must have seemed so far fetched initially turned out to be almost prophetic. A must read in my view and highly recommended. I’d give it 6 stars if I could!

Saw this title and I thought that is a book for me!! But seriously, this is great, I'm so glad I picked it up. I thought the writing was incredible and especially impressive as it's a debut. I really enjoyed all the different points of view in the book and reading it in the current climate felt exceptionally terrifying! Such an interesting take on the plague/apocalypse style novels. Despite there being a few other books like this it felt completely unique and unlike anything I've read before, I honestly could not put it down and read it over a couple of days. Definitely going to look out for more from Christina Sweeney-Baird. Thank you for sharing this review copy!

In years to come readers unfamiliar with the details will probably think this was written in response to the COVID pandemic, it’s hard to believe that a novel predicting a life-changing global pandemic which kills men rather than women was written the year before a life-changing global pandemic which has killed more men than women. At first I was wary that it would be too close to reality to read this review copy in 2020 and if I’d lost someone close to me that would probably be the case, but I was drawn into the story, told from the viewpoints of different characters around the world as the virus takes hold, from the first page to the last. It begins with Amanda the Scottish A&E consultant who sees the first men die, realises something is very wrong and tries to get a local lockdown but is dismissed as a hysterical female by the powers that be. Cases spread quickly across the UK, then around the world as we are introduced to a variety of characters, each trying to get to grips with the new world with very few men in their own way. Catherine the anthropologist terrified she’s going to lose her husband and son. Dawn the bored senior civil servant counting down the hours to retirement until she’s suddenly left as the person in charge. Brothers Toby and Mark on a cruise to see the northern lights when the captain realises all they have to do is stay at sea until it’s all over to stay safe, they’ve got plenty of food to keep them going for a couple of months. Lisa the ruthless Canadian scientist who’s always employed the best woman for the job finds herself at advantage in the search for a vaccine when all the male scientists are dying but will she win the race to find it?
This could so easily have turned into a feminist diatribe or a depressing novel without hope but somehow, no matter how sad their story, each character lifts the reader in their own way. Brilliant page-turner!

The first thing that came to me whilst reading this book is it is very close to home with the pandemic that we are currently going through at the moment, when something like this happens it is absolutely devastating, this is the first book I have read that confronts this type of pandemic and I wonder if there will be any other books that confront this issue. It all felt very real reading this, the fact that no one really thought anything of it at the beginning but then how it all spiralled out of control. If we weren't where we are at the moment then I would not believe this could ever happen. It really makes you think what life would be like if you were in this situation. A though provoking and emotional read, one that made me think and one I will never forget.

The End Of Men is a book that would always have appealed to me, even before I was living through a global pandemic. Written a few years before the situation we now find ourselves in, it’s surely a quirk of fate that it will be published in a time we are, hopefully, rebuilding our lives.

Did I read it differently to how I would of a year ago? Yes. Are there parallels? Yes, undoubtably, because a virus that takes over the world in a matter of weeks is something that is now much more of a reality than many of us ever thought. I think as a result, whilst reading I was a little less terrified than I would’ve been, and maybe it seemed less like fiction and something that could be in the daily news. Which just serves to demonstrate quite how timely this book is.

Spanning years and told by a kaleidoscope of distinct narrative voices
The End Of Men is a brilliantly written story of humanity. It delves deeply into what it takes to survive yet it’s also a heart-wrenching exploration of grief, bringing to life the all too raw poignancy as we consider what we’ve lost and what may be changed irrevocably. Highly recommended.

The author assures us that this book was conceived of and written in 2018, when the idea of a pandemic affected the whole world was laughable. Nowadays, of course, it's not quite so far fetched. Still, at least ours doesn't have the death rate that the fictional Plague does.

I tore through this book in less than twenty four hours. It's a fascinating look at how the world might react to this kind of plague. (Quite late in the book, when a COBRA meeting are discussing allocating children to parents, I had the horrific thought that at least child abuse would probably go down.) The slight differences between countries are interesting, too, and someone more anthropologically minded than me would probably be able to read quite a lot into that.

I do have one tiny niggle, and I have to bear in mind that I'm reading a very early proof copy and this may not be an issue in the finished book; I found it hard to keep track of who everyone was. We're following a dozen or more people, who all have friends and support systems, across more than five years, and at least for me I didn't find the narration very different. Each section is headed with the character's first name, where they are and the time, in days, since the plague started, but I kept having to remind myself which person was which. Again, though, I'm reading a proof and there may be a dramatis personae or an index in the finished book.

Apart from that very minor niggle, I really enjoyed this. Christina obviously thought really carefully about the impact this plague would have on the world. I would have loved it to go on a little longer and see what effect the drastically reduced child population would have on the world, but that's not what this story was about.

I think even without current circumstances, this book would have made me feel creepy and like I should keep away from people; it's just that good. I'm really looking forward to seeing what else Christina writes. I think she's going to be one to watch.

Thank you to NetGalley for access to this book. I feel for the author, A book about a virus that kills a large part of the population was probably a really good idea before the start of 2020. The start of this book was almost impossible for me to read. It hit to close to home. Parts of the book were riveting. I think this is a good book but it was just the wrong time for me to read it.