Sand
No romance or no physical intimacy at all.
Closed door. No anatomical or crude language.
Estimated from the blurb · 0 reader votes
Tropes
None listed yet.
Content warnings
Blurb
“Hugh’s imaginative worlds and tales within them never fail to entertain!” —Andy Weir, New York Times bestselling author of Project Hail Mary The first original novel from author Hugh Howey in six years, Across the Sand takes us back to the world of Sand, to a far future many generations after a disaster has destroyed civilization as we know it, where four siblings struggle to build their futures amid the harsh wastes of endless desert The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes, a land of howling wind and infernal sand. In this barren home, siblings Conner, Rob, Palmer and Violet daily carve out a future. They live in the shadow of their father and oldest sister, Vic, two of the greatest sand divers ever to comb the desert’s depths. But these branches of their family tree are long gone, disappeared into the wastes beyond, leaving the younger siblings scratching in the dust, hopeful for a better life. On the other side of No Man’s Land, Anya was born beside the abundant mines knowing her prospects would be to marry, have a family, and work in ore, in service to the Empire of the East. But when an atomic bomb delivered by a stranger destroys most of her town—murdering all her friends and community—she follows her father to a strange land of dunes to bring vengeance to their enemies. Two families collide across the sand, and nothing for a thousand dunes will ever be the same.
Read it? Rate it
Landline
Like the seed, it's about family bonds strained by loss, but swaps desert survival for a warm, low-stakes domestic romance with time-travel whimsy.
Everything and the Moon
Like the seed, it centers on class barriers and thwarted plans, but swaps desert survival for a spicy Regency second-chance romance with a happy ending.
The sum of all kisses
Both hinge on a violent past act poisoning family ties; this one resolves it through slow-burn banter and romance rather than brutal desert survival.
The People We meet On Vacation
Another story of people bound by shared history and old wounds, though warm, funny, and vacation-bright instead of harsh and violent.
A Million Junes
Shares grief, a dead parent, and the long shadow of family legend, but trades sand-diving brutality for lyrical small-town magic and tender first love.
The Price of Love
Also about a neglected eldest child shouldering a house full of siblings, only the hardship here is family secrets and class, not apocalypse.