First published 2025
Seventeen-year-old Liz Flannery has turned an abandoned bookstore in suburban New Jersey into her fortress. Since the first Storm destroyed civilization, she trades books for supplies with the scattered survivors who find their way to her door. The bookstore feels like the only safe place left in a broken world. Then Liz discovers another catastrophic Storm is coming, one that could finish what the first one started. A stranger named Maeve breaks into the store one night, seeking shelter. Maeve is prickly and potentially dangerous, but she knows how to repair buildings. Liz needs those skills to fortify the bookstore before the next climate disaster hits. She agrees to let Maeve stay. As the two girls work together to prepare for the approaching Storm, their initial hostility transforms into something deeper. But Maeve carries secrets, and Liz struggles with her own inner turmoil. When both their hidden troubles surface, they must fight not just the coming environmental catastrophe, but threats that could destroy them before the Storm ever arrives.
Genres: fiction, dystopia, 21st-century, post-apocalyptic, climate-change, apocalyptic
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family, secrets
Setting: Earth, New Jersey
Period: 21st-century
320 pages · Hardcover · Delacorte Press
Content warnings: anxiety, depression, mental-illness