A few summers ago, I was sick and so decided to watch AMC’s zombie epic, “The Walking Dead,” from start to finish. As I fell deeper into the show and began to develop parasocial relationships with the characters, I worried constantly about their interactions and how the smallest bit of tension or mistrust might get someone killed.

I also stayed up at night imagining the smells and the absolute horrid condition my skin would be in in a world without sunscreen or Cetaphil. What I didn’t spend one iota of thought on was the characters’ romantic lives. They didn’t have time to fall in love, after all. They were too busy trying to survive.

Author Paul Michael Winters, however, does think about this sort of thing: Falling in love during Armageddon forms the basis of his debut novel, Together in a Broken World. In Winters’ post-apocalyptic landscape, teens Zach and Aiden are surviving, sure, but they certainly aren’t thriving. Zach, 17, lives alone in a bank vault in the shell of the town he happened to be visiting when the world ended. Aiden, 18, serves as a zombie-virus-immune courier for a post-disaster consortium of scientists known as the Collective. Neither is doing particularly well, but they both do markedly worse once they bump into each other.

On the run from a band of heavily armed and very angry (but otherwise healthy) humans, Aiden is carrying a secret that he’d die to protect. Zach, at least at first, is willing to prevent that death. After weathering the band’s opening onslaught via a combination of well-placed traps and ingenuity, Zach and Aiden spend the night together while avoiding — credit to the author — the classic “there’s only one bed” romance trope that could’ve so easily been employed.

From there, they set off on a journey across the Pacific Northwest to reach Aiden’s final stop, the Collective’s bunker at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. Although this isn’t exactly an enemies-to-lovers tale — Zach and Aiden are more like acquaintances of necessity — readers do get a few tropes (hello, makeover that leads to a sexual realization) and will-they-won’t-they tension that drive the plot as much as do the dual looming threats of the undead and whoever is after them. (Spoiler alert: It’s someone from Aiden’s past whose presence is problematic in more ways than one.)

Throughout the book, unfortunately, Winters’ need for a happily-ever-after takes priority over what should be the grim reality of the world he’s built. Things go almost too well for Zach and Aiden on what ought to be a harrowing road trip. It’s nice — heartwarming, even — to encounter pockets of humanity in a post-humanity hellscape, but the facile ease of their journey started to grate on me. Far too often, our heroes remain shielded by plot armor that neuters the initially frenetic pacing and pushes readers toward a cheery ending that, though appropriate for the genre, feels unearned.  

Still, while I wish Winters would’ve leaned more heavily into the horror/thriller/sci-fi elements the narrative seems to promise (especially given its YA framing), Together in a Broken World makes up for many sins thanks to its humor and heart. Are the references more “middle-aged man” than “late-teen boy”? Sure! Does everything feel a bit too convenient? You bet. But it’s got spirit and solid bones, and I’d be willing to pick up the author’s future offerings the next time I’m traveling cross-country on my own do-or-die mission.

Nick Havey is director of Institutional Research at the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, a thriller and mystery writer, and a lover of all fiction. His work has appeared in the Compulsive Reader, Lambda Literary, and a number of peer-reviewed journals.