Until the End of the World
Until the End of the World • Book 1
Why You'll Love This
This zombie apocalypse opens with a woman who was already falling apart before the world caught up with her — and that emotional detail changes everything.
- Great if you want: character-driven survival fiction with real interpersonal friction
- The experience: propulsive but grounded — tense without sacrificing emotional depth
- The writing: Fleming's voice is wry and unguarded — Cassie feels lived-in, not performed
- Skip if: you prefer action-heavy zombie fiction with minimal character interiority
About This Book
When Cassie Forrest finally decides to stop sleepwalking through her own life, the zombie apocalypse arrives to complicate things. What makes Sarah Lyons Fleming's debut so compelling isn't the outbreak or the desperate scramble out of Brooklyn — it's Cassie herself, a woman already reckoning with loss and self-sabotage before the world gives her even better reasons to fall apart. The stakes are survival, yes, but the real tension is whether someone who's been quietly giving up on herself can find reasons to fight hard for others.
Fleming writes with warmth and a sharp sense of humor that keeps the darkness from becoming oppressive. Her characters feel genuinely inhabited — flawed, funny, and capable of surprising you — and the relationships between them carry real weight. The pacing is confident, pulling the story forward without sacrificing the quieter moments where character actually lives. In a genre crowded with bleak survivalism and grim spectacle, this book earns its emotional payoffs honestly, building toward them page by page rather than simply declaring them.
