It feels odd to say that this is a story about hope. It’s poignant and sad, and I truly did not like the characters, who were each consumed by depression, or desperation, or both. But Lunde weaves together their stories beautifully.

It’s just that I read books by women authors because I detest reading about toxic men, and there was quite a lot of that in this book. 

This was such a depressive read. No one was happy for more than a page or two... The last 20 pages were the only that were a little hopeful. I thought the characters were incredibly annoying - mostly the two male main characters. They really thought that the sun revolved around them, plus the way they thought about women, and the people in their life - disgusting. The good things about this book was that it was very readable and the topic and themes were very relevant and interesting, it definitely got me thinking about the environment and the bees. 

The true tragedy here is the emotional ineptness of men.

I would’ve probably stopped reading this after ~100 pages if not for the fact that the other book I was reading was worse and I didn’t want to dnf two in a row.
Not a big fan of the style and narration; subtlety doesn’t seem to be Lunde’s strong suit. I hated existing inside all of the MCs heads and was glad when the main plot picked up pace in the second half. Overall, the story of the bees is not what’s interesting here as the whole thing is quite obvious from the start and I could’ve done with less talk about bees, beehives and bee history.
Instead, a closer examination of the family dynamics would’ve been interesting; of the parent's expectations of their children and the allegory that is to be found in how we treat our Mother Earth.

Overall, I’m puzzled why this was everywhere a few years ago – must’ve met the zeitgeist at just the right time. 

Well, ich will definitiv nicht mehr sein, wenn die Bienen aussterben..
Ich mochte Tao mit großem Abstand am liebsten, George fand ich anstrengend, William war halb-lovable, aber irgendwie ist er auch einfach ein Creep. Generell sind die Beschreibungen der weiblichen Nebencharaktere etwas misogyn..
ansonsten ist das Thema super, der Aufbau ist super und der Plot ist nicht predictable! Ein sweetes buch all in all. Ich fand es so spannend, dass ich mich zurückhalten musste, nicht die Sätze zu überspringen