Thanks HarperVia and BookishFirst for an ARC of this book!

The End of the Ocean alternates between two plot lines: Signe in 2019, setting sail from Norway to the South of France, haunted by memories of her past; and David in 2041, desperately trying to survive in a world stricken by drought. While I enjoyed both of the POVs, I ultimately found David's more compelling. The world that Lunde paints, tainted by a lack of rain and freshwater, was frighteningly realistic. I found David's struggle to keep alive and care for his daughter to be heartbreaking while also revealing the hardships of those around him. As for Signe's story, I was more interested in her reminisces than I was in the journey that she was on. I enjoyed learning about the climate-related strikes that she participated in during her youth and their entanglement with failure of her first relationship. However, in her present-day, I continually got hung up on all the technical language used to describe her boat; I know very little about boats and couldn't always keep up. I appreciated the stark contrasts between the two POVs as well: woman struggling on her own vs. man caring for his child; world completely on water vs. one where it was scarce; ice vs. heat. However, I wanted the stories to come together a little more in the end.

Overall, The End of the Ocean was a highly readable book that explores a not-impossible situation in a not too distant future. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4