The End of Always by Rebecca Phillips (review)

Reviewed by: The End of Always by Rebecca Phillips April Spisak Phillips, Rebecca. The End of Always. Second Story, 2024 [230p] Paper ed. ISBN 9781772603712 $15.95 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 7-9 Isobel feels helpless to stop her father as his certainty that doomsday is coming spirals out of control after the death of Isobel's beloved mother. Without his wife to provide balance, his focus on bunkers, preparedness, and stockpiling supplies consumes most of his time until he finally decides to have himself, Isobel, and her younger sister vacation at a survivalist community called Endurance Ranch to see how they like living there. Isobel is deeply suspicious about whether it will actually be a short visit, but she has little choice but to go and hope that she can change his mind somewhere along the way. Although she forms a quick and close friendship (and soon romantic relationship) with Dane, the son of other preppers, it is not enough to make her want to stay at Endurance Ranch, and Isobel realizes she may have to take drastic action to shake her dad out of his single-minded focus. Isobel, first bemused and increasingly alarmed, is a thoughtful narrator—her love for her dad is an undercurrent of everything she says, even as he disrupts any stability she finds. Motivations for the existence of a compound like this are handled with care, and the book acknowledges the validity of the residents' worries about disaster or economic collapse. Isobel is sympathetic in how she describes the people who have chosen to be there even while she is absolutely disinterested in her own family remaining among them.