This is a tension-filled and well-written story about a young girl surviving in a remote valley after apocalypse. I was engrossed enough to read it in a single sitting, but it is also deeply, deeply irritating. You see, a man comes to the valley - another survivor, perhaps the only other one. And for about half the book I was thrilled, because I'd feared this was going to go the sexual assault and control route so beloved of post-apocalyptic narratives, and initially Z for Zachariah looked as if it were going to be original enough to avoid that.

Of course it wasn't. Of course it wasn't! What was I thinking...

It turned, abruptly, into every "edgy" unsavoury narrative of its type, but it doesn't even have the saving grace of a successful heroine. Ann, competent in every area but common sense, apparently, lets herself be chased out of the valley and into wasteland. Oh, it's presented with a veneer of agency, but she leaves her home, her animals, everything left she has to love because she doesn't have the gumption to shoot the person who tries to rape and cripple her, despite many opportunities to do so. He uses her dog to track her, and all she decides to do is try and shoot the dog! I don't know why teen girls are meant to be so soppy and self-sacrificing, always worried about the monsters who hunt them, but I for one am sick to death of reading about it. She even says if she finds others she'll try and send help - what the hell for? So that this person can be inflicted on the rest of the surviving world? Forgiveness of this level is not a virtue, and nor should it be presented as one. I'm damn sure if Ann were Andrew, he wouldn't be expected by the author to keep excusing his attempted rapist.

Promising beginning, interesting premise, but falls very quickly into cliche and ends as ultimately enraging. There is nothing empowering about this. Nothing.