All we Have Left by Emily Paxman

Thirty years after the end of the world, a young woman enters into a marriage of convenience with a man she hardly knows so she can secure vital medical care for her beloved younger sister.

The world might not have ended all at once. But end it did.

Kayla Hollins is a survivor. Living in the fragmented wasteland of the Canadian Pacific Northwest, she's outlived a colony, a cult, a paramilitary group, and most of her family. So when her younger sister April falls seriously ill, Kayla will do anything to save her. They trek to Salt Spring Island, a beacon of hope in their otherwise brutalized world, which is rumoured to still have a hospital. But Salt Spring's utopia comes with a price. Not just anyone can enter paradise or access their medical care, and Kayla's past is chequered.

Desperate, Kayla makes a deal with Sid Charles, an aspiring politician with whom she had a chance encounter before arriving on Salt Spring. If Kayla and Sid get married, it will boost Sid's chances of election, and grant April automatic access to the medical treatment she desperately needs. And in two years, when Kayla is eligible for citizenship herself, they can get a divorce. Simple, right?

Sid is distant and cranky, but Kayla comes to learn he is also shockingly kind. The more time she spends with him and his ragtag group of rescued boys, the more she comes to admire him. But with April's treatment and Sid's election on the line—and the constant terror of her past being discovered—Kayla isn't sure she can risk trying to change their arrangement.

Trapped together in the closest thing left to paradise, Kayla and Sid both know what it means for the world to end. But as they try to rebuild with the people of Salt Spring Island, there may be time left to save—if not the world—themselves.

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What if My Life with the Walter Boys happened thirty years after civilisation collapsed—and instead of high school drama, everyone was navigating medical access, citizenship law, and the deeply romantic concept of functional post-apocalyptic bureaucracy?

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📚 Pre-Reading Thoughts

A marriage-of-convenience romance in a carefully rebuilt post-apocalyptic society is exactly the sort of premise that lives or dies on worldbuilding. If the setting doesn’t feel believable, the emotional stakes collapse with it. But this immediately sounded promising because it wasn’t focused on the disaster itself - it was focused on what comes after: systems, survival, governance, and the exhausting practical work of rebuilding society.

Also, the phrase “post-apocalyptic bureaucracy” activates a very specific part of my brain.

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📖 Post-Reading

As I thought…

• Emily Paxman has very clearly thought through how a community might realistically organise itself decades after societal collapse. The worldbuilding is detailed without becoming overwhelming, and everything has that satisfying sense of practical adaptation.
• I love that the town they’ve repurposed didn’t have government offices, so civic administration now happens in a supermarket. That is exactly the kind of grounded logistical detail that makes a setting feel alive. Of course they’re using the supermarket. Where else would everyone already know how to gather, distribute resources, and queue under mild stress?
• The relationship dynamics work well because they’re built on necessity first and affection second. The emotional development feels earned.

It surprised me by…

• How much warmth exists within the setting despite the harshness of the world. The rescued boys, the slowly forming found family, the small routines of daily life - it all gives the story emotional texture beyond survival.
• Kayla as a protagonist. She’s capable and intelligent, but crucially she’s unevenly knowledgeable. She’s survived a brutal world, but there are huge gaps in what she knows because survival doesn’t produce perfectly balanced skill trees. That makes her feel deeply believable. Honestly, she has strong Knight energy: practical, action-oriented, emotionally stubborn, and occasionally attempting to solve complicated feelings through sheer forward momentum.
• Sid. “Distant and cranky but secretly incredibly kind” remains undefeated as a character archetype.

There’s also something deeply hopeful about a post-apocalyptic story centred not on defeating evil, but on building systems worth living inside again.

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🎧 Music Pairing

🎵 Featured Song:
Ends of the Earth

🎶 Vibe Album:
If I Should Go Before You — weathered, intimate, hopeful despite everything.

🎧 Artist Recommendation:
Novo Amor — soft apocalypse music for people quietly trying to rebuild their lives.

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🌈 Vibe Check

• Colour Palette: cedar green, storm grey, faded denim blue, campfire amber
• Soundtrack: rain on tin roofs, ferry engines, supermarket trolley wheels echoing through empty aisles
• Season: damp Pacific Northwest autumn
• Mood: resilient, quietly romantic, practical but hopeful
• Scent: pine forests, woodsmoke, damp concrete, soup cooking somewhere nearby

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🃏 Tarot Pull

Knight of Pentacles
Steady rebuilding, persistence, responsibility, and the slow work of creating stability in an unstable world. This card fits both Kayla and the setting itself perfectly.

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👀 For fans of

• My Life with the Walter Boys
• Station Eleven
• post-apocalyptic stories more interested in rebuilding society than endlessly watching it burn

All we Have Left publishes on the 30th of June, 2026. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.