Abundance is a sci-fi survival book about two men, Luke and Alex, who are the lone survivors of a malfunction of their colony ship when it lands on New Earth. As they set about surviving on an unknown world, a relationship between the two develops.

The two big emotions that this book plays with are hope and grief, deeply felt by Luke and Alex, respectively. The first quarter or so of Abundance focuses almost exclusively on Alex's grief with respect two the deaths of all of the other passengers on the ship, some of whom had been his friends on Earth. However, while Alex was mourning these deaths, he also begins to lust after his commander and fellow survivor, Luke. This section gave me a bit of whiplash, switching between lengthy ruminations on death to drooling over a shirtless Luke. Personally, it felt a little weird, tonally.

This first quarter of the book was my least favorite, and I found that it picked up from there. Luke's basically only motivator is his steadfast belief that other colony ships had landed before them and that those other people were coming to save them. For me, this hope was more affecting than Alex's grief. It was heartbreaking to watch Luke determinedly build a communications device and wait by it day after day, waiting for a response, and not receiving one.

I also particularly enjoyed Alex's explorations of the nature around them -- his excitement about the exploring spilled through the page and made me excited, too.

Luke and Alex's relationship felt a little odd at first since they were pretty touchy with each other from the get-go, but I really enjoyed how it developed throughout the book. Alex working hard to maintain Luke's unflappable hope for rescue was adorably sad, and I do enjoy the 'only people in the world' trope.

My only beef with their relationship was that the pacing of the book made it a little hard to keep up. The author would often summarize their daily routine, and then just say that a significant amount of time had passed without incorporating any change to their relationship, which just felt a little unnatural to me.

Overall, though, I enjoyed this book, and I'm glad I stuck with it past the first 20% or so, which I didn't enjoy as much as later sections of the book. It wasn't particularly deep, surprising, or emotional, but it was an entertaining, fun read for a lazy afternoon.

ARC provided via NetGalley