Surviving the End: Six Book Boxset

By: Grace Hamilton

Narrated by: Chris Monteiro

When society collapses, one family will do whatever it takes to stay together

Shane McDonald is working at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant when a solar storm wipes out the grid. He's desperate to reach his family, but they're hundreds of miles away, and the world is falling apart around him. With a blind daughter to protect, finding his way back to his loved ones will be a dangerous journey, across treacherous terrain.

Jodi McDonald gathers her brother and son and heads for her prepper mother's house in rural Georgia. There, the family braces for the coming nightmare. Unprepared townspeople want to steal their supplies. A vicious gang wants revenge. All the McDonalds want is to be left alone, but peace won't come without a fight.

When drought and fire drive them from their refuge, the McDonalds must take to the road. Battered by grief and hardship, they must rely on each other to survive. But the greatest danger of all might come from within the family itself

©2024 Relay Publishing (P)2024 Relay Publishing

A Story of love, loss, and family

This book follows the lives of a family. It describes how they work to survive and try to thrive in their own way following a Coronal Mass Injection into the power grid. The six book series covers the different aspects of their work to survive.

Both the author and narrator bring the struggles to life. Understanding this series is not only heart wrenching but also makes one think about how the reader might react to this situation.

Engaging!

Oh my I kept wondering what would happen next! It held my attention. Book 6 made me cry.

Riveting Series

Surviving the End is the six book series following the post-apocalyptic story of the MacDonald Family including spouses Shane and Jodi, daughters Kaylee and Violet (blind daughter with service dog Ruby), son Owen, brother and uncle Mike, and grandmother and survivalist prepper. The family fight to survive after a massive solar flare destroys most of the world's electrical grids. This riveting and enjoyable series has well developed characters, lawless gang members, suspense, danger, plot twists, and a relatable post apocalyptic event. I highly recommend this exciting series.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

Great series!!

This was a great series! Very emotion filled story telling and writing. More than once my eyes teared up. Story follows a family after an end of the world event, where they struggle to survive and find each other and stay together. Highly recommend this story. Grace(Author) does a great job with character development and story building. Great job!!

4.5 Stars - Great Boxed set

This was a great boxed set. Grace Hamilton has provided us with characters and story lines that will capture your attention and keep you coming back for more. Chris Monteiro did a fantastic job of breathing life into this series and made it a fun listen.

I received a copy of this audio book and I am voluntarily leaving my honest review.

Thank you for including the whole series

It was a very good series with lots of depth around the characters. I liked the ending.

Too much ridiculousness

I am a big fan of post apocalyptic fiction and especially EMP themed stories. I listened to the full six book collection but at many points it was very difficult to continue because of the stupidity and ridiculousness of the plot:/ Way to many dumb decisions by the main characters, one of which is a nuclear scientist and another someone in the CDC. They act like total fools over and over and over again and no intelligent person would make such foolish decisions even in the face of such adversity. I do not recommended it and quite frankly wish I had not wasted my time:/

great story of survival and family standing together

this is an amazing series of books. It's a lot to take in but at no time did I get lost or get tired of the story. Very well written and preformed thank you for all the hard work you put into your writing

Keywords of Series: Family and Community

This is a colossal 51-hour, six-audiobook box set. I have read or listened to several survivalists/EMP series by this author, and I'd recently thought that her series were seeming too similar and what happens in each series was feeling a bit stale, even if dramatic or heart-wrenching. I'm glad to say this box set not only shook all that up but brought all the feels as we follow a beleaguered family after a coronal mass ejection.

That last bit is one thing I liked. This wasn't just a vague EMP (as my memories say the other books were), but a very specific type. The book follows the McDonald family over several years as they confront disaster after disaster—starting with the CME but also including a massive wildfire and back-to-back hurricanes—losing family members along the way but never their collective spirit. One thing that distinguishes this book from others written by this author is that the overarching theme that comes across is community. Yes, the first book of this series follows the path of other series by this author, with the family split apart in several different locations, each confronting their own difficulties with different villains galore, before they all are able to gather together at the end. So, at first, I thought this would be similar to other series by this author I had read. But the next books, instead of focusing on a villain or groups of villains one after the other—which is what the other series felt like—the rest of the series focused on communities, each facing the aftermath of the CME in their own ways.

I loved how some of these early books focused on the small community that eventually named itself Hickory Falls. This is where the matriarch of the McDonald family (Bev) lives, and Grandma has been a prepper! So she has years’ worth of food and water in her sub-basement. But few in her community are prepared for the CME, and they start to look at Bev and her brood, suspecting—though not knowing for sure—that she's a prepper well able to take care of herself and her family. This causes much consternation in the community over the course of several books, but I like how the community does pull together eventually, even though everyone is not happy with their new normal, and they help each other learn gardening and other survival skills to allow them to not just survive, but thrive. Grandma Bev and her granddaughter Violet are pivotal in helping the community, Bev with her prepper and gardening knowledge and Violet spearheading the formation of a community garden. Others are not faring so well outside the new Eden’s walls and want into this community. As you might imagine, some old-timers are against letting in newcomers, even if they are willing to work.

The first three books also have a broad story arc about a villainous, organized outlaw biker gang who are making their own rules in this new world. Bev's daughter, Jodi, when she is separated from most of her family in the first book, gets kidnapped by them and nearly sexually assaulted. She is able to escape, but she's given this biker gang a reason to hunt her and her family down.

That's one aspect I wasn't wild about in this box set. It has scenes of extreme graphical, up-close-and-personal horrific violence. We see this in nearly every book, if I am remembering correctly. A particular villain who turns up in book 4, causing problems until nearly the end, is particularly violently brutal when he decides to go rogue.

That particular villain starts a news story arc in Book 4; Book 3 wrapped up nicely by finally taking away the threat of the previous story arc’s outlaw biker gang. But right away in Book 4, we see a new disaster looming for the citizens of Hickory Falls and the surrounding area. The new villain is a firebug, and he sets in motion what turns into a raging wildfire that takes out much of the Macon, Georgia, area. He's both a psychopath and a sociopath, able to turn on his own version of charm when he wants to, though there's always something a bit odd about him. He's able to make it to Hickory Falls and decides that will be the new place where he watches the world burn around him. No one knows for a very long time that he set the original fire.

The end of book 4 is so sad, not as though other parts of this book haven't been sad, as the family and the rest of their community watch their small town, their Eden after the CME, go up in flames. After it, the McDonald family—and the rest of the surviving community—have nothing, after having flourished for several years. This thus begins a new journey for everyone in the McDonald family, except one beloved character—who had survived a near-fatal cancer near the start of the series—who gave his own life to save that of his 2-year-old niece. This massive fire within Hickory Falls also splits the family apart again, and they don't come back together until the end of book 5. Nearly immediately after they do so, they lose another beloved member of the McDonald family, one who had been separated from her spouse and child since the Hickory Falls fire. Her loss was devastating, one that brought tears to my eye, especially after having been so strong helping the splinter of the family she was with survive their trials.

Book 5 was also about community, but in a very different way. Part of the family was able to find refuge—with ample food, water, and medical care—in a religious community not far from them, but it turned out to be a misogynistic cult with a leader who was the de facto judge, jury, and executioner when he desired to be. We see the end of the second major villain in this series in this book, and he has a surprising connection to the villainous group of people who dominated the first three books.

The death at the end of book 5 sets up the final book, sending one member of the McDonald family into such deep grief that he actually has a mental break. The author did an excellent job depicting how this now unreliable narrator experienced his world. He saw people who weren't there, acted impulsively, and otherwise was a bit of a douchebag to his family, including his 2-year-old daughter. His impulsive moves imperil the family more than once. At times, I wish his parents or his grandmother would have stood up more to him so he couldn't wreak the havoc he did. Certainly, heading for the eastern US coast during hurricane season wasn't the brightest idea! Again, what the family goes through is harrowing, and as nature seems to vent its fury on the family, they lose two more members of the family.

At least at the very end, the remaining members of the family get to have a bit of a reprieve for an enjoyable few months. After weathering two hurricanes back to back, they decide to take an abandoned boat still in good condition and sail until they find a place they think they can live for a while. They happen on an abandoned resort island that has a bunch of things they really need, like plenty of canned food and stores full of new clothing (even if branded!). They're able to get the abandoned culinary gardens going again and also fish for their suppers. While they certainly miss and grieve for their now departed members, this time away from others provides healing for the members of the McDonald family. At the end, though, they decide they need to be around people; they just need to find the right community.

I hope I didn't give too much away, and you still feel as though you will have something to read after this long review!

A few things I like about this series, aside from what is mentioned above … I like how this author's series always feature people of all age ranges, social strata, and physical ability. In this book, we have an age range from 2-year-old Katie to great-grandmother Bev. Both figure into the plot in many places; these aren't just side characters. In fact, until her death, Bev was a true matriarch, the driving force of the family, determined to keep her family together and safe, providing as much as she could, even though her health faltered often. Others in the family had physical struggles before the series began, like the mostly blind teenage daughter Violet (Jodi and Shane’s girl) and her uncle Mike, still weakened after his recent surgery and chemotherapy.

Young Katie did not exist at the start of the book. When the McDonald family took in a group of orphaned teens, their teenage son hooked up with one of the teenage daughters … literally. We saw little of their romance—most happening off page—but it has a profound impact throughout the book, especially after the family escapes the cult in Book 5. Another teenage romance blossoms between Violet and a teen orphan the family has taken in. That's another thing I like about books by this author: they almost all have romances (or at least a romantic element or interest), and romance is not just for young people! The other great newfound love story in this book is between Grandma Bev and her sheriff boyfriend. They are so sweet together, so caring and kind! While Bev was married before, James was a longtime bachelor, but he appreciates a good woman when he sees her … and we’re told that he’d been “sweet” on her for years! Even the primary married couple, Jodi and Shane, parents to two teenagers and a 6-year-old when the series starts, have their moments when they shine and show what a mature relationship should be between two people who don't always agree. They always respect each other and listen when one does speak what's on his or her mind. They act like reasonable people towards each other and the rest of their group, no matter what else is going on within them and the world around them. It's the touches of humanity like what I've described above that make these books resonate even if they are more violent, harrowing, or horrific than you may want to read or listen to.

One character who represents a different social stratum enters the series early in Book 1 when Shane takes the newly orphaned young man under his fatherly protective wing. His mother made Shane bust him out of juvenile detention at gunpoint. While they certainly hit bumps along the road, Corbin soon becomes an unofficial member of the McDonald family, helping them defeat foes and falling for Violet, the McDonald teenage daughter. He’s actually a handy guy to have around, both for courageous defensive and offensive acts and the practical knowledge and skills he learned from his father that come in handy in the new post-CME world.

Because of all that happens to the characters we come to love and root for in this series, this is not an easy listen or read. At times, I had to just stop—reading or listening to more happy books—and wait for a few days to continue listening. But the author created such compelling, believable characters that I kept coming back to the series, even when I knew there would be some pretty horrible things I'd have to listen to! If you enjoy dystopian, survivalist fiction, this is one of the better ones I’ve listened to by this author … and, well, ever!

Loved the main characters

Too much sadness but it’s has to be in disasters that occurred throughout the six books of the series