Reviews and Comments

As many before me have already summarised the plot of this book, I won't repeat that bit and jump right to my thoughts about it.

I don't agree with other readers who compare the relationship between Lydia and Caleb to humankind's destruction of the environment at all.
Rather the opposite: in an environment where there's nothing to hold on to and everything is collapsing, what is thought to be wrong could be the main ressource of stability.

When I started reading Cold New Climate I utterly underestimated it, wondering if it was a bit of a Sex and the City for Generation Z-types. But it soon grew out of this vibe.

Isobel Wohl composed two main characters who were shaped by the losses and their own struggles with the world and themselves to be drawn to each other by each coincidentally suffering another loss at a similar time. For the first 2/3s of the book each of their personalities and psychological issues tie them together in a way that seems /is highly unhealthy. However, in a world of Harvey Weinsteins, high expectations of social functionality, environmental crisis and the decline of the ordered world, this fround upon relationship turns out to be a very stable construct to carry the two through decades. And just at a point where Caleb seems more stable and might be denied a life with a loving relationship in a romantic way, Wohl offers him exactly that and opens the door to a new life he could not have had at an earlier stage, a beautiful, kind, bitter-sweet ending for her first novel.

The only criticism I have is that it felt inconsistent to me how Caleb's mental health and medical needs seem to become irrelevant / inconsequential / undetectable from a stage of the plot where I would have expected them to be far more consequential and leaves gaps that can either be filled in a well-meaning way or raise the question how much of it was used for dramatic effect than with actual interest for the lifelong consequences of depression and addiction.