73 books like Divided We Fall

I love this book because of the strong ties between the characters. Amidst an alien invasion that has decimated and scattered Earth's population, 16-year-old Cassie’s main motivation is to keep her promise to her dead father and find her little brother.

I love the character development in this book. The drive she had to dive into unknown and dangerous circumstances kept the book in my hand. I had trouble putting it down each day to go to work. As you follow Cassie through her adventure, you find that the hope she feels keeps you locked in. 

I found this book on TikTok. The author's words and images inspired me to order it. Once I picked up the book, I couldn’t put it down. The book is thought-provoking from the first page. What is Oliver hiding from his wife? The zombie apocalypse starts, and you almost forget about the question as you follow Oliver and Zoe as they struggle through the end of the world.

I loved that even though this book is about a new type of zombie apocalypse, the overall feeling I got from it was the hope that Oliver and Zoe kept. They hoped that the other was alive and that they could keep each other safe when they were reunited.

When I read this book, I was very glad I came to it late. I never had to wait to get the next book in the series. While I am recommending this book in particular because it is the first, the whole trilogy is needed to get the full effect of the story.

Following 16-year-old Adam through this story was fun and exciting. The emotions ranging from scared as hell to hopeful throughout kept me engaged. The main feeling I kept was the hope that he and his family would stay safe in the community stronghold that they had built. I also hoped that even though society had fallen fast, maybe it could eventually be healed. 

I loved the Maze Runner series when it came out. So when I heard that Dashner had started a new series with all new characters, I was excited. When I could finally sit down with it, I was not disappointed. The characters are young and naive because they have been secluded on a small island for the last 73 years.

Their lack of knowledge showed up immediately in the new and horrifying world they had been thrust into. All of this kept me engaged to the point that I tried to read the entire book in one sitting. The main theme that I got from the characters was the hope that they had. The hope was that they would stay alive, if not safe, and that they would be able to help the world with their immunity. 

This novel took me into a community that I rarely read about in fiction, to show the human impact of a controversial industry—in this case, GMO agriculture and Idaho potato farmers. From my research for two of my nonfiction books, I started with some understanding of the complex debate, and I appreciate that All Over Creation branches into more subplots beyond simply Big Agriculture versus family farms. In fact, I liked Will, the well-meaning local farmer who sincerely believes that GMO potatoes will save his ailing farm, far more than Yumi, the main character, a single mom who long ago fled potato country. She seems too caught up in her resentments against her father and hometown, to care about anyone but herself. 

I’m always astonished and grateful when someone who has lived through extraordinary events also has the skill to describe them brilliantly.

Tara Westover’s gorgeous writing won me over before I could even begin to appreciate the strange, dangerous, and ever-shifting terrain of her childhood. Her descriptions of growing up in a fundamentalist, survivalist home with no formal education, and no official record of her existence, never stopped surprising me as I gobbled up the pages.

I was amazed and inspired by her determination to forge her own path as an adult and to see the world for herself rather than simply accept the stories she’d always been told.

I challenged myself by listening to Cloud Cuckoo Land and pondered keeping up with extremely diverse plots and story threads. And yet, I discovered a thrill ride that traversed the past, present, and future! I employed the five senses—sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste—with illustrative descriptions and vivid, vulnerable characters that kept my imagination on full tilt.

I learned that I don’t have to love the characters when I’m empathetic and understanding of their weaknesses, defects, and personal history of suffering and loss. I didn’t miss a beat with all the twists and turns, and a tapestry emerged from divergent storylines. Also, I love it when an author innovates word usage, especially verbs! This book is a descriptive writing master class in a book!

This book had me alternating from laughing out loud to holding back tears (or sometimes not holding them back).

Two parallel stories about loss and hope unfold from the perspective of main character, Sal Hiddle. Populating the two stories is an impressive cast of quirky characters, including Mr. Birkway, a gem of an English teacher who shows that believing the best about his students helps them be their best, a lesson that has been valuable to me as a teacher, friend, and parent. 

Unlike the typical post-apocalyptic fare of nuclear war or other identifiable disasters, Dies the Fire posits an interesting question: What if everything just stops working? Everything we rely on to drive modern society, from combustion to electricity, fails. Against this backdrop, a cast of characters from varied backgrounds all must struggle to adapt to this new reality. Civilization falls apart, and new orders spring up in their place. What drew me most to this was the different ways in which the characters responded to this situation. Some seek simply to survive, while others seek to exploit this new reality for their own gains at the expense of others.

There is something very powerful about finding beauty in a dark and gritty situation, as Cory Anderson does in this novel. Told in a multi-person viewpoint, the language is powerful yet also poetic and shines a light into the dark, uncomfortable spaces of poverty and crime, and limited options, but still comes back to the hope, love, and friendship that can exist in-between those places.

There is cold, and then there is the unforgiving cold of an Idaho winter. The setting echoes the biting poverty that Jack and his younger brother are forced into by events out of their control. The crimes of his father drag Jack and his brother further into a desperate situation with no safe way out, even with the help of Ava, who has demons of her own. The despair of poverty, the desperation of trying to do the right thing and being forced not to,… show more.