Emily St. John Mandel manages to tell several, heart-breakingly real human stories, against the backdrop of a scarily realistic, scarily close dystopian world. I think that what makes this book so incredible is just how close it is to our modern-day reality; the characters are normal people, with varying lives, who are thrust into this horrific nightmare of a world, but manage to make something of it. It is an incredible story of how humans act, how they cope, and what they need. I would recommend this to literally anyone; despite at first glance being similar to lots of not-so-great books, it takes those themes and turns them into something incredible.