Sunny at the End of the World by Steph Bowe

Title: Sunny at the End of the World

Author: Steph Bowe

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: Text Publishing

Published: 4^th March 2025

Format: Paperback

Pages: 272

Price: $22.99

Synopsis: In 2018, seventeen-year-old Sunny and Toby are on the run after zombies have destroyed most of the adults in their world. Cut to 2034 when Sunny is being held in an underground facility. What happened? Was it aliens, a conspiracy, a simulation, biological terrorism, a totalitarian takeover? And who can infiltrate the facility and release the surviving prisoners? The tables will be turned more than once in this thrilling and thought-provoking novel.

With Steph Bowe’s sad passing at the age of twenty-five, in 2020, we lost a truly wonderful author of three smart, funny YA novels. Her mother and sister discovered a manuscript on her computer: the book you have in your hands. Steph was always wise beyond her years, with the power to access other worlds. Somehow, in Sunny at the End of the World, she predicted an ‘outbreak’ much like the one that changed our world, after she was gone…With her trademark humour, endearing characters and brilliant storytelling, Steph Bowe has left us a novel that helps to make sense of the rapidly changing world we live in.

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It’s 2018, and the zombie apocalypse has come to Australia. Sunny and Toby are on the run with a baby – and no adults have survived. Everyone seems to be a zombie or dead, and the world as they know it is being wiped out. But in 2034, Sunny is being held in an underground facility, filled with teenagers and very few adults. She has no idea what happened to Toby and Ronnie, and no idea what happened sixteen years earlier after they escaped the apocalypse. In fact, in 2034, nobody really knows what happened other than something wiped out the major cities and most of the population. So, what is the underground facility? Is it all part of a conspiracy? Or was it biological terrorism to control the population, or a totalitarian takeover to create a population that doesn’t question authority? Or, is it just a simulation – a way to show people what the world might become? Nothing is clear in this novel and the tables will be turned more than once in Steph Bowe’s post-humously published novel, five years after her death in 2020.

Sunny and Toby’s worlds change during the 2018 sections irrevocably, and the impacts of these changes are felt in 2034 – like why can Sunny talk as a zombie whilst everyone else is dead or unable to communicate? Does she hold the answers to what really happened and the bridge between zombie and human? The story moves back and forth between 2018 and the deathly apocalypse and the 2034 future underground, and journey to find answers about what has happened and what has been going on. Things are not quite as they seem – talking zombies for one, are a hint that there is something in people like Sunny that can fight the zombie virus to some extent. Her consciousness and ability to think and speak is strange to many, given what they know about zombies. And what we as readers know about zombies. But what Steph Bowe has done is taken the end of the world trope and the zombie apocalypse trope and created something interesting, and a little unsettling. But that shows what a world ravaged by an apocalypse or totalitarianism might be. It highlights what could lead to an apocalypse, or what the outcome could be, playing with ideas about control and biological terrorism, or ideas around population control. It is, at its heart, a story about the lengths people will go to so they can keep secrets or save themselves, and the bonds we create in life that might seem odd at the time, but make sense when we understand everything that is happening around us.

Sunny at the End of the World takes us into a world that is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. A world that could very much become a reality – even if it is sans zombie apocalypse, where governmental control gets out of hand. And Steph Bowe wrote about it for young adults in an accessible and easy to understand way, complete with the reactions and feelings young adults and teens might have in this situation. Their drive to survive and maintain their morals. Their desire to help people but being unsure how, and she does this with an unlikely trio: a talking zombie, a baby and a boy who hasn’t been infected yet. As the novel goes on, things are explained, and references to various popular culture phenomena are made, and they work well in the 2018 and 2034 contexts. They are ones that many people will know, or at least have some reference for as well. It’s also full of wisdom and humour, something that I love in young adult books. I also find that young adult books like this are adventurous and diverse – authors like Steph aren’t afraid to push boundaries and explore themes and characters in young adult novels that are often not seen in adult novels. It’s what makes children’s and young adult books so vibrant and diverse, and the ones that give us so much more of the world. It’s books like Sunny at the End of the World that show us what we can be, and what the power of representing diversity – even in a zombie apocalypse can do to empower people and raise their voices.

And books like this can remind us that reality is subjective as well. Beliefs are subjective, and everyone is an individual, no matter how much outside forces try to make everyone into what they want. Individuality is powerful. As this was Steph’s final book, found on her computer by her family, we’ll never know what other words she could have set out into the world. Never know how many more stories she had in her that would have made a difference and given people a voice or created something so thought-provoking, that those who read it can see the world in a different light. This was a poignant tribute to a powerful voice in young adult literature and her contribution to #LoveOzYA books and voices.