A Love Story From the End of the World - Juhea Kim - ★★★.¼

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AUTHOR: Juhea Kim
GENRE: Short Story Collection
PUBLICATION DATE: November 20, 2025
RATING: 3.25 stars.


In a Nutshell: A story collection set in various eras and locations. The resilience of humans and the destruction of the planet are the common themes. Intriguing storylines, flawed characters, slow-paced character-oriented narratives. Mixed feelings about the endings. A good collection, but not for all.


Author Juhea Kim is known for her two historical fiction novels. This is her first short story collection.

The ten stories herein span multiple eras (from historical to futuristic) and countries. There is no foreword introducing the theme of the collection, but it soon becomes clear that the stories have two things in common: broken people and a broken world.

The ‘broken people’ aspect is quite significant in this character-oriented collection. Each character is either flawed in some way or misused by others. They are a product of their own nurturing (or lack thereof) as well as of the society that is concerned more about personal wellbeing than about the planet.

The ‘broken world’, though highly dystopian in a couple of the stories, still feels very real. It’s a world where humans have learned to live with the consequences of their actions, where nature no longer protects, where climate crisis is the present and not the future. At the same time, despite these dire circumstances, the focus still stays on the characters. The resultant worldbuilding is thus an eerie one, where we get only hints of the damaged planet and its shattered environment and climate, but even these teeny glimpses are worrisome enough. (Will these stir us into caring better for our planet? I doubt it. Today’s humans are mostly idiots when it comes to implementing long-term actions that don't offer instant results. 😒)

The pacing is quite slow in the stories due to the characters driving the narration. The tone is also mostly melancholic, though a couple of scenes are heartwarming and hopeful. The length is quite varied across the tales, so some stories seem to drag a bit, especially as they also contain multiple subsections.

Most of the stories had plotlines that appealed to me. However, in a few cases, I felt like I wasn’t clever enough to appreciate the story, or at least, its ending. It felt overly literary. A couple of the stories came really close to a higher rating, but lost on account of their abrupt closure. Some narratives were creative enough to deserve a separate novel or novella.

As always, I rated the stories individually. Of the ten stories, four touched the 4-star mark. Two more stories (‘Older Sister’ and ‘A Love Story From the End of the World’) came close to this rating, but their endings left me wanting more. These were my top favourites:

🌏 Biodome: An intriguing setup that would have been fabulous in a novel. There's so much potential to extend this story. It wasn't bad, but it left me longing for more, which is both good and bad in short fiction. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🌏 KwaZulu-Natal: A bittersweet story about a young man and a young elephant. Excellent depiction of human nature in this one. Trigger for animal cruelty. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🌏 Mountain, Island: A really sad story. A dual narrative is rare in short fiction, but this makes good use of it to present two contrasting lifestyles. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🌏 Notting Hill: Took me a while to gauge how I felt about this more realistic version of Notting Hill, but I ended up deciding that I liked it for its true-to-life portrayal of relationships and the believable, less than saccharine ending. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐


Overall, this ought to be a good option, but not for those looking for a light or quick read. The character-focussed narration, slower pacing, and somewhat sudden endings would find restricted appeal, but to readers focussed more on the journey than on the destination, this set of stories offers plenty of mind fodder.

Recommended to literary fiction readers looking for a thought-provoking collection highlighting humans, their frailties and their blind hopefulness in a damaged world.

3.25 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each tale.

My thanks to HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction, and The Borough Press for providing the DRC of “A Love Story from the End of the World” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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