I have had a string of bad book luck this year but California is something else. I would gladly suffer the likes of Annihilation and We Were Liars over ever encountering California or its author's future literary "efforts" again...unless that encounter involved seeing pages of her novel tenderly soaking up dog piss in my local park. The first chapter is Frida not shutting the entire fuck up about a turkey baster. She talked about this baster so much, I thought I mistakenly downloaded self-published objectophilia erotica. She hides it away, lovingly caresses it, is entranced by its girth and shininess. She is more passionate about the baster than her husband, Cal, which could be forgiven because Cal is The Worst. I mean, they are both terrible but it's easier to side with Frida for most of the novel until*. How did she resist feeding him poisonous berries or smother him with a pillow? Were pillows the first to go in this book's vague but severe collapse of society? And really, how bad could the events have been if two indecisive mouth breathers like Cal & Frida survived? The further I got along, the more I hoped space debris would land on Cal or Frida impaled herself on one of the oft mentioned spikes. Multiple scenarios of hilariously fatal accidents befalling these idiots so that tangible characters and a compelling plot would arrive to my rescue. There is plenty of room to slip into unconciousness while disasters are alluded to but never explicitly described, make up fucking after the same damn fight over not telling anyone about the goddamned baby, irrelevant anecdotes about a weird college, baking so much baking, and cliche tearful recollections about murder gangs roll by. One section did stand out purely for it's awfulness, Frida's brother and her husband have an in-depth conversation about the (not present) Frida's menstrual habits. The brother and Cal could very well have noticed but it'd have been a thousand times less disgusting if Cal and the brother had asked Frida directly about the validity of her pregnancy. The brother has a community to consider and Cal has no problem unloading his numerous doubts and misgivings about everything else under the sun onto Frida so why not? I could have ignored it except in that same conversation, Cal segues from thinking about Frida's period to reminisce over spreading her ass cheeks apart during one of the jakillion fuck sessions therefore calcifying the grossness of the whole thing.Shortly after, some inconsequential sitting around happens while they wait for a vote to be allowed to stay. Someone finding the christing turkey baster and the vote are the lone moments of...whatever is about 7 rungs below concepts like tension and suspense. It's not quite plot and still tepid to be sure because the vote is a formality. Frida and Cal have all but been accepted and welcomed to this community since she's related to the leader and they each have campaigned in their own way to win people over. They like it there, they want to belong, contribute, and they need the security of a permanent place for them and the baby. The vote is just so it's on the books and Frida can not help her stupid self. This is the until*, a dramatic re-enactment of her picking the exact moment the community is voting in her favor to reveal the pregnancy thereby fucking up everything: . My ears are fuzzy and I'm dizzy trying to recover from that atomic blast of idiocy and self sabotage. I don't even know what happened after that, something about a gun, they are in a tree house and they did NOT recreate the mass suicide from The Mist, unfortunately.

Someone here on goodreads said that this read like a first draft. I agree.Someone else said that the writing was average at best, siting the example: "Cal didn't like that. He didn't like that he didn't like that". I agree, and good example. Someone else said that it seemed like the only thing they'd ever do was have sex. Yes it sure did. So I just couldn't finish this. The writing was too lackluster and felt so strained. There were four letter words thrown in here and there that just didn't fit the tone of the story. I felt like the author was trying to give it some edge or something, but all it did was make me cringe. Not because of the swearing, but because of the forced tone. I was really looking forward to this one. I picked it up the first day it came out on Audible. One of my favorite narrators reads this one, but it wasn't enough to save it for me. But some of the best reviewers out there (D, K, and L to name just a few...) are giving it 4 stars. So don't let this sway you if you want to give it a go. It just wasn't for me.

This was, simply put, the worst book I have read in recent memory. I'm shocked at the number of positive reviews. Frankly, I'm not sure why I read the entire thing: it was disjointed and overly self-conscious, and took itself WAY too seriously. Even in dystopia (wartime, etc) , there are light-hearted moments where our humanity shines through. There's none of that here, no humor, no authentic or believable emotion (even believable trauma) of any sort. To make matters worse, the characters are unlikable and their relationships unbelievable. The ultimate insult is that is very poorly written. Example: the author's only way of communicating that a character is surprised is by writing, "She/he raised an eyebrow." I swear, the phrase "raised an eyebrow" must have been repeated 50 times.Ugh, I really wanted this to be good -- it was an intriguing premise. But alas, I wish I could get those hours back. Don't waste your money or time.