GABE IN THE AFTER

An Anne of Green Gables homage set in a post-apocalyptic near future.

It’s been two years since the end of the world, and Gabe Sweeney, now 14, hasn’t seen a human soul other than the 17 other kids and two adults he ekes out an existence with on a small coastal Maine island. They are apparently the only survivors of a mysterious, lethal virus even worse than the one that came before. Then, on a routine scouting mission to the mainland, Gabe meets red-haired, green-eyed Relle Douglas. This changes everything: Not only might there be other survivors, but Gabe finds himself smitten with this fey girl (who talks just like Anne Shirley: “The very stars made our meeting happen,” she tells Gabe). When two other survivors are spotted, Gabe and fellow island kid Wynnie hike to Massachusetts to learn more about this new world. The narrative leans more on romance than action, with Gabe mooning after Relle throughout. The trek south is dotted with the occasional post-apocalyptic rubble but is remarkably free of hazard (and corpses); some feral pigs only stare, and an armed woman quickly befriends them. Even the encounter with a quasi-militarized community of survivors is anticlimactic. Readers who know the region will alternately scoff and blink in confusion at the descriptions of the setting. Gabe and Relle present White; tan-skinned Wynnie is nonbinary, and the island community is multiracial.

A genre mashup that doesn’t quite come together.