Review: How We End by LM Juniper

Title: How We End

Series: How We Survive: Book One

Author: LM Juniper

Length: 343 Pages

Category: Dystopian Horror, Post-Apocalyptic Urban Fantasy

Rating: 5 Stars

At a Glance: LM Juniper metes out the fear in a perfect contrast to the strong emotions that come with loss and a growing bond. I’ll cut straight to the chase: How We End is perfection for Horror loving fans.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: A deadly infection. Seven Strangers. The fight for survival begins…

Jake didn’t think his night could get worse, but that was before his train stops deep underground and zombies attack and things go from worst-day-ever to run-for-your-life terror.

Liv is good at running, mostly from other people straight into a bottle of vodka. But as chaos erupts on the city streets, depending on others may be her only chance at survival.

London is gone. The world has ended. In the chaos that remains, seven strangers fight to escape the city. But as they navigate this new and dangerous world, they soon discover that surviving the apocalypse means confronting their deepest fears and making unthinkable choices.

Review: It’s the end of the world as we know it, and nothing at all feels fine in LM Juniper’s How We End. Readers are thrust into a post-apocalyptic dystopia rife with flesh eating spores and mutating zombies that are the source of all the chaos and danger in this world the author has built. I’ll cut straight to the chase: it’s perfection for Horror loving fans. This world is giving The Stand meets The Last of Us meets The Walking Dead set in and around modern London where those who are fortunate enough to still be alive, so far, are barely outrunning death while seeking answers to a cure (a la I Am Legend).

As you would expect, there is also immeasurable loss amidst the gore, and the breakdown of civil rule is completed when martial law consumes the landscape. There is chaos, but there are also folks coming together into a found family dynamic. This didn’t start off anywhere near hopeful of them making a connection, but it maintains the human need to bond and survive in a world that is slowly losing its humanity. Death becomes a way of life, but that doesn’t mean the losses aren’t heartbreaking. Told in the dual POV by Jake (in the first person) and Liv (in the third) gives the storytelling a well-rounded perspective from two vastly different characters, while showing readers the building connection and attraction between them. It’s not a “love conquers all” story; it’s a “love might find a way” story that’s still in the making between Jake and Liv.

LM Juniper metes out the fear in a perfect contrast to the strong emotions that come with loss and a growing bond. Writing Jake in the first person is intimate and feels personal, adding to the bond between him, the story, and the reader, while seeing scenes through Liv’s eyes and painful biases engenders sympathy.

As a companion to this novel, How We Began is a novella the author recommends reading in what may seem the wrong order but is the absolute right way to take it in. Reading it immediately after finishing How We End gives some perspective to events leading up to the fall of London, as well as seeing how Jake’s father plays into the story in more detail.