A gréât read. A well thought out dystopian world that gives enough detail to understand but not too bogged down. Full of twists and interesting details

Miriam (Mim) is a mother of two children living in a near-future dystopian Australia. The country has changed dramatically due to climate change and rising water levels.
It is now run by an organisation called The Department, everyone is microchipped, and if they challenge the state, they may be sent to BetterLife camps.
Mim’s husband is working abroad, and when he goes missing, she is initially very concerned, but becomes more frightened as the Department start to threaten her and take away her passport.
She decides to try to find her husband and goes on a road trip with her children.
I had great hopes for this book, it started so well, the description of how The Department insidiously took control and how ones every movement is monitored is chilling.
But, Mim seemed to be so hell-bent on her mission that she failed to see the trail of destruction and damage to people that she left behind her, to the extent that by the end of the book I had no sympathy left for her, but felt very sorry for all her family.
The end was very rushed, and not very credible.
Three stars, down from a potential five.

Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK for the opportunity to read this book.

Really enjoyed it. Quite scary in a way as you can imagine this sort of thing really happening. Good that the woman ended up being the hero and saving everyone else. All the women in the story are portrayed as the strong ones - and the males are the weaker ones. A good read.

This could have been a really great book but I felt let down by the ending. There were moments of complete tension, particularly on the boat but there were also moments when you have to suspend your logical thinking and just go with the story. I think the author wanted to show how great a mother’s love is and how much she will protect her children but then would she have taken off so quickly without a plan just because her husband was missing. To me she put her children’s safety in jeopardy very much ahead of her supposed love and devotion for her husband so that premise didn’t work for me.

A thoroughly good read. While dystopian in its setting, it is a realistic, highly credible environment. The story of a women and her children desperate to find her husband who has disappeared whist on 'Departmental" business. The travel, the characters , the emotions are all well crafted and highly relatable. The mystery keeps one anxious to find out what will happen
A book well worth reading and an author worth following.

This is one of those books which draws you in from the start and you just have to keep reading it to see what happens next. A thriller with strong characters and an air of mystery throughout as you follow a mother's journey to protect her children and search for her missing husband. Highly recommended read.

If you are looking for a near future thriller then this is the book for you, it has a very good and well thought out plot line and it is hard to predict how the book will end. It shows how we could descend in the near future and it is also about human interaction and connection. I didn't feel I connected or could relate to any of the characters and I feel as though it lost a little bit in the telling as you go through the book. But I did like the storyline.

A really gripping and thoughtful mystery set in a near future Australia where extreme measures have been put in place to cope with post climate change life and to control the population under the guise of caring and convenience. I was really struck by the fact that Mim and Ben initially saw themselves as staunch environmentalists but gradually got dragged into the system. Also the younger generationd frustration that they had to live with the effects of missing the climate change action window.

That all sounds very serious and parts of the story are but there's also plenty of adventure as Mim and the kids go on a mission to find the missing Ben. I loved this and couldn't put it down. Food for thought as well.

The impressive - and frightening - aspect of this novel is that it has a totally believable near-future dystopian scenario, unlike many other far-fetched SF plots. It needed no suspension of disbelief on my part, as many of the details are already in progress - or not far from fruition. The human micro-chipping is a particularly chilling forecast of things to come, unless humanity starts to wake up and get off its collective knees. I hope this will act as a warning akin to Orwell’s prophetic novels, if it’s not too late.
A must read, if you value freedom,