Hell Followed with Us

This was an absolute fantastic read and I loved it. It was a stunning debut for Andrew Joseph White and I can't wait to see everything else he comes out with. His second book looks extremely creepy and stunning as well. Within the first, maybe 10? 5 even? percent of reading this book I knew it would be a 5 star read and the author a top author. He had such a way with words that I kept wanting to read.

I love the post-apocalyptic genre. Give me it in any format and with any origin story. Virus, alien apocalypse, ton of natural disasters – I don't care. Two of my favourite things in this genre is a) people creating communities. Getting together, living in a school or small neighbourhood. These people creating a school for the children. Anyone who has medical experience setting up a “hospital”. Give me all of it. B) the environment taking over man-made structures. Give me grass all over parking lots. Vines and ivy growing all over buildings. I love it.

This book had both of that in spades and I was here for all of it. The community building here was done by an LGBTQ+ centre – which I thought was excellent. I felt so much for these characters and I was happy to do that. The author did a great job at that and I hope his next book will also feature characters that I love almost immediately.

Benji and Nick were two fantastic characters and were a big reason I didn't want to stop reading. I loved that we got both of their povs and were able to know them more (than just dialogue). Even if we just had Benji's pov I would've been happy because we got to know Nick through the dialogue and his interactions with Benji.

The plot was fantastic. The author definitely has a way with words that make you keep reading and keep you invested in the plot. Almost every chapter had me on the edge of my seat and I wanted to know more about the beginning of everything. So if he ever wanted to write a novella... I'd be right there.

The gore was so well-written. Extremely visual in the writing and pulled no punches at all. Extremely descriptive but done amazingly well, which made it all the better to read it. Tying the gore and the post-apocalypse so closely to religion was a great choice. White certainly didn't hold back but I didn't mind it at all because I know religion often isn't kind to those who don't tick their boxes. This is a dark book and it dealt with very dark themes, specifically church-related but it was done really well.