BookBrowse Reviews Endling by Maria Reva

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Maria Reva breaks the fourth wall in her novel about Ukrainian romance tours.

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Maria Reva's debut novel Endling follows a group of Ukrainian women involved in "romance tours"—a cultural phenomenon akin to the mail-order bride system in which men from around the world come to meet Ukrainian women with the goal of marriage. At these events, the men are referred to as bachelors and the women as brides. But these brides live double lives. While they follow the tedious rules of engagement at Romeo Meets Yulia—even creating imperfections in their outfits for the men to fix for them—they're powered by desires that are as far from wedded bliss as can be. One has made a mobile lab for her snail conservation studies while another is hoping to draw her activist mother out of hiding by kidnapping some of the bachelors. Rich in detail about romance tours, snails, and Ukrainian feminists, Endling makes it easy for you to lose yourself amongst its brides.

But the part of the book that was most thrilling for me was how the author handled a huge twist. A Ukrainian native raised mostly in Canada, Reva retains close ties to her Ukrainian family and culture. While she was writing Endling, her homeland was invaded by Russia. Some authors might finish their book as if nothing had happened, and some might shelve the project indefinitely. After the first part about the brides, told in third person, I was shocked in the best way to see that Part II was in autobiographical first person, with the author telling her own story. She shares the grant proposal she wrote to travel back to Ukraine, alongside exchanges with editors and agents about her work. Because these documents capture her very unique perspective and include matter-of-fact details, I thought this strategy was more effective than if she had just stated her feelings. On some level, I believed the author was going to go rescue her characters, so entwined does her story become with theirs. After this portion, the narrative returns to the fictional storyline, where the invasion has now occurred. Going forward, there are short sections detailing Reva's trip back to Ukraine while writing.

When a real-life war enters the world of a novel, readers know there won't be a happy ending. I wondered what climax could come in this book named for creatures that are the last of their species.

There's no silver lining to a war novel. Even if all the characters are safe and healthy by book's end, readers know that's probably unrealistic. And Reva has written herself in as a character, one who, on account of being human, can't have a neatly resolved arc. Ultimately, she showed me how, as a writer, we can find new paths beyond happy or sad. What is there to be celebrated, even in a tumultuous situation? What if we refuse to either redeem or condemn a character with complex morality?

In one of the autobiographical sections, the author writes about the brand of dark humor she claims is part of the Ukrainian survival instinct. I like that she never abandons that humor entirely. Rather, she zooms back enough to wink that she knows this story of 13 kidnapped bachelors in a mobile snail research lab is ludicrous, even, or perhaps especially, on the precipice of war. Reva includes correspondence with an editor who wants her to write about the invasion as a Ukrainian but without the infusion of humor. Instead, he requests that she focus on a more straightforward (and cliché) narrative about watching the war from another country. I thrive on inappropriate humor just as much as I wither on clichés and tropes, so I felt angry on her behalf.

There's a hint of surrealism as the kidnapped bachelors and brides alike deal with the outbreak of war. To kidnap them, the brides tell the men they are going to an elite forest party, and traveling in a vehicle that is also an escape room. The bachelors are surprisingly susceptible to both these ideas and spend the first few hours looking for a key. The brides initially tell them that the explosions they hear are fireworks, to celebrate a national holiday for romance. When they are finally told the truth, they are incredulous. Watching this disbelief play out has a kind of dramatic irony that's horrific and hilarious at the same time. Most of the bachelors aren't particularly likable, so I felt less invested in their fates. Yet it's hard not to empathize with characters who don't want to believe the worst.

A lot of novels contain autobiographical elements, including works of metafiction where the author enters the story as a character. In Endling, Maria Reva enters because she can't possibly leave herself behind. But she can't abandon her characters either. The novel begins with romance tours and endangered snail rescues and manages to become a truly original wartime lament.

This review first ran in the June 18, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.