Wow! I loved this book so much and was drawn in completely from the beginning. This book is epic in every sense of the word.

There are two threads to this story: One were we follow Ruth Before the event that changes her life and one where she learns to navigate her new world after.

Ruth is a great character who is likeable, but also relatable and flawed like the rest of us. She has great friends and a loving family, but has fallen into a claustrophobic relationship. News repots are peppered through her daily life, but she shy's away from finding out what is really going on. Eventually she makes a decision to fly to the other side of the world, and as life as she knows it ends, she begins a new journey with a stranger, Nik.

This tale of hope and wonder, love and what it means to survive is beautifully told. It is moving and also exciting. A truly fantastic story to get swept up in.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Hodder and Stoughton for the opportunity to read this advanced copy.

This was an interesting book to read. Ruth’s story is told then and now in alternate chapters. She has made some bad life choices mainly in men and her relationships with them. Her best friend Fran encourages her to stand up for herself, be her own woman. In the now, she has flown to New Zealand as part of her big adventure where she is hoping to get volunteer work with whales. As the ‘great event’ is about to happen, she is on the beach, with a dying whale and Nik, who has escaped his life after the death of his partner.

This is a well written imagining of what the world would be like after a disaster, although we don’t get told what that is exactly, and what you would do to survive. We’d all like to hope that we’d be able to cope, but most of us have led such sheltered lives where every basic requirement- water, food, heat etc - is laid on for us. We know the theories of how to make a fire, a shelter etc but would we actually be able to do it. I’m not sure if I enjoyed it his book, possibly because it’s too close for comfort to what could easily happen. However, I was invested enough to want to find out what happened. Definitely worth a read.

This is a really unusual and interesting post-apocalyptic survival tale. Ruth's before and after story is told in alternate chapters. I like the way that Ruth is largely unaware of what is happening and the actual cause for the disaster is not spelled out. I will say no more as the joy of reading this book is the surprises it reveals. It goes far and beyond any other story of this genre and actually has a hopeful, if bitter sweet, ending. The writing style is lovely. I was engrossed from the start.

Quite possibly the best dystopian, world-ending novel I have ever read!
Alternating between Ruth then and Ruth now, the difference between the two being a cataclymsic disaster that wipes out the world as she knows it, the book covers her relationships, both good and bad and cleverly explains her personality and her motivations via her interactions with those she loves.
The passage of time in the book is well handled and it was really nice to read an end of the world book where people are not fighting and killing each other over resources!
beautiful, descriptive, thought provoking, emotive- read it!

I was hooked on this from the first page - absolutely loved the writing. Although to be honest, I was already committed thanks to the cover - I too have always loved whales.

This feels not like a dystopia, but the coming together of life post apocalypse - the joy and relationships that grow even after the worst has happened, as the two worlds, and the event that separates them, come together.

Wow, I raced through this, thoroughly enjoyed it. It would make a good book group discussion.
The story runs between a Before and After, namely around a nuclear attack which razes the world to the ground. Ruth has left England to travel to New Zealand, completely ignorant of what is in the news. She ends up on a beach to see a stranding of a whale, along with a Kiwi photographer Nik. When it suddenly looks like the world is about to end, they take shelter in the dead whale's mouth, later to exit it to a landscape of ash, with the 2 of them the only humans around. There then follows the story of the 'After', intertwined with Ruth's life in the 'Before', and there are many similarities, so much so that sometimes you wonder if only one world is the reality. I think it's very clever how the author manages to do this, making so many things like the whale itself, the ocean, and even small things like a yellow mac, and a primary school mobile classrooms and caravans, link both narratives.
There is a lot that happens in both stories to keep you gripped throughout. A thought provoking book, highly recommended.

This novel spans the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of protagonist Ruth’s life.
The before is set in the present and charts Ruth’s burgeoning new relationship with the good-looking and charismatic family man Alex.
The after is her story as she is thrown into a dystopian world where she is having to negotiate the end of civilisation as she knows it.
Both worlds are linked by Ruth’s love of whales and the stranding is both about them and about Ruth herself as she is literally beached and has to find the resources to start again.
Sawyer writes well and I believed in Ruth and cared about her fate.
Her ultimate life is both uplifting and devastating and I’m left with the sense of bereavement you feel at the end of a good book with characters you really care about.
Recommended: a good story with well-handled characterisation.

I had been looking forward to reading this after seeing all the glorious proofs on Twitter! And the book did not disappoint. I really enjoyed the originality of this novel - thoroughly imaginative, scarily timely, and written with quite filmic prose. The book cover is also glorious and I cannot wait to buy a physical copy.

This is a gorgeous debut. It's quiet, and many things are left unexplained, but rather than being frustrating this gives a sense of sparseness, of the paring away of the unnecessary.

Apart from the 'surviving by sheltering in the dead body of a whale' (which, honestly, lead me to assume when I saw this in the blurb that I would be reading some kind of allegorical fantasy), there's nothing exactly original about The Stranding. Far from being a problem, this lack of inventive flourish gives the novel room to breathe life into a much more mundane story of humanity, family, love and loss.

I can imagine some readers finding it hard to suspend disbelief when it comes to the mechanics of survival, and possibly this is a fair criticism, but it didn't bother me at all. Maybe, in fact, I did read some kind of allegorical fantasy - but it made me feel all kinds of emotions and, really, what else are novels for?

My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for the ARC.

Really enjoyed The Stranding, and finished it within a couple of sittings. The storyline was so unexpected, and it was lovely to see real character growth. Very easy to read, with a nicely-paced plot which kept interest to the last pages.

Chick-lit and dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction might seem unlikely bedfellows but Kate Sawyer has merged the genres to produce an intelligent, moving and thought-provoking first novel.
Sawyer tells how Ruth - a thirty-something London-based teacher with a string of dodgy relationships behind her - lands up on a beach in New Zealand as the world as we know it ends. She, and the stranger she meets there, miraculously survive. Distinctive Before and After chapters chart her previous life and what happens next in a compelling and entertaining way.

What a fabulous story! The Stranding is a compelling tale of disaster and what it means to survive in a world that has changed. I enjoyed the intertwined plotlines of past/present and felt with the host of flawed characters in this book. This is a story that will leave you thinking about our modern lives and about how we are treating our natural world.

This is an utterly gorgeous book. Written with beauty and power, it follows Ruth as she struggles to survive a nuclear apocalypse by hiding in the body of a whale. The surreality of her situation is written with a dream-like quality, and yet is fully steeped in reality, with the reader never disbelieving her experiences. The back and forth plot - swaying between the Before and After - is beautifully done, with the world events at the periphery (and sometimes, a little too much so). A timely and compelling read.

This is an absolutely stunning book. Almost dreamlike, it lures you in and gently brings you under its spell: it's fantastical, yet grounded and completely compelling. I loved it, and know it will stay with me for a long time.

Ruth Lancaster has lived quite an ordinary life. She’s in her 30s, and has rarely been alone although best friend Fran teases that she never leaves one relationship without another one to move on to. Ruth is a school teacher and close to her loving parents, but feels dissatisfied with her life. Little does she know that a global tragedy is going to test her to the limits.

The story is told simultaneously in the present and near future. Chapters alternate between the Ruth of today, getting to know her as she moves from mistress to live-in girlfriend at home in London. Then flashing forward a few years to wear she has travelled to New Zealand and survives some major world event (it’s never clear what this was, but hints are made towards global conflict and the destruction of western Europe). We follow her as she learns to survive alongside freelance photographer and native New Zealander Nik, while gradually coming to understand how she ended up there and how little her previous life had prepared her for her new one.

This is a really well told story. It’s slow paced and methodical, but never boring. Ruth purposely turns off the bad news at home which gives an eerie sense of sleepwalking into a disaster. But, there’s also a worthy focus on the here and now, on surviving. You won’t find many of the post-apocalyptic horror tropes here. There aren’t roving bands of crazed gangs. The threats are more practical in nature, and are as likely to arise in the portions about the present time as they are in the post-crisis world.

A thoughtful and interesting story and one I very much enjoyed.

I will publish the review on my blog around two weeks before the release date and also review on Amazon, Goodreads and Storygraph at that time.

I had been really intrigued by the title, cover, concept – everything, but I found it hard to get into the story right away. BUT! by around Chapter 5, everything changed. The novel gripped my attention and didn’t quite let go until the very end. It is very raw, no sugar coating, especially the life post the emergence out of the whale’s mouth. The story has this The Book of M and Station Eleven type of feeling to it. Before and after storylines complement each other; relationships building and falling apart, hard choices being made, all thought-out and well written.

A strongly compelling novel of the the time before and the time after an apocalypse, the two stories before and after intertwine. Well written, flawed characters who grow into better and stronger versions of themselves while surviving in a world that is all but destroyed. An interesting read that stays with you long after it comes to an end.

How to write a review for a book that blows your mind. Stunning. Beautiful. Intelligently crafted. Brave. Spellbinding. All true, yet weak descriptors for this gorgeous tale of love & loss. I'm honoured to have read it and it will stay with me for a very long time.

It is a truimph of a novel with deep emotional engagement. I can't count how many times I cried. Tears of hope and love too.

It astounds me that the author could dream up this magnificent tale. I mean how on earth did she imagine it? And the threads throughout both timelines are so expertly weaved.

This is a lesson in storytelling. A triumph of a tale.

You need to discover Ruth and Nik' and explore their wonderous love.

Fantastical book with rich alive characters. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The figurative language the last scenery and the real characters. I highly recommend it