The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison

A dark as night apocalyptic novel? That’s actually good? All the stars going up.

She wakes up in the hospital after being sick to realize that they are no people around. Just some dead bodies and the remembrances of a sickness that was rampant. Mostly all the women were dying and the babies and children were all gone.

She ventures home shell shocked and is almost raped in her bed. She discovers that there are a few men still alive but the rules have changed.
She poses as a man because those are her best chances of making it anywhere without being made into a captive.

When the sirens quit, the rules gave out. Some people had been waiting their whole lives to live lawlessly, and they were the first to take to the streets. Some people knew what would happen; they knew better than to open their doors when they heard cries of help. Other’s didn’t. What disease cannot do, people accomplish with astonishing ease.

This book takes on this type of story differently than I’ve seen it done. It seems like by reading the blurb and a few of the reviews that you are getting a story that’s been told before but not that I’ve read. The unnamed woman sets out on her journey and I became entranced by it. I usually gripe and whine about not knowing all the tidbits..like what the disease actually was and what caused it. But not this time. It is done

PERFECTLY. The author does take the time to wrap up the stories of the characters she introduces. (Even when you wished she hadn’t…dark stuff)
Then genders are blinded when the world is thrown to shit.
Women are basically trade items at times and then ‘hive’ masters the next.