*** I was provided with a copy of this book by the publisher through Netgalley. All opinions are my own. 
 The Boy on the Bridge is prequel to The Girl with all the Gifts, but I would recommend reading The Girl with All the Gifts prior to reading The Boy on the Bridge. I think that a reader would get more out of both stories if they read them in publication order. TBOTB follows the Rosalind Franklin and her crew as they attempt to find a cure to a devastating infection. I do not want to say what it is because it slightly spoils TGWATG. It's a well written story, but it does not deviate too much from the formula of TGWATG and I think that is what I found most disappointing about this book. While there is some interesting treatment of specific characters, I just wanted more and I think the story Carey was focused on in this book was just a little too small for the vast world that was undeniably beyond the scope of this novel. 
 I thought that this book was okay. I could not get myself to care about the characters. Just like the first book, there is a brilliant young person, a mother-like adult figure, and a gruff military leader. There isn't very much that is new in this book besides some helpful context for some of the events in TGWATG. 
 If you have read TGWATG you know from the beginning that something happened to the crew of the Rosalind Franklin, you just aren't sure how the events came to pass. The only reason I continued reading was because I wanted to know what would happen, but I did not care about the characters or the struggles they were dealing with. 
 My favourite part of the book was the descriptions of the settings. Much of this book is set in the Highlands of Scotland and I happened to be on vacation there while I was reading the book. I saw how difficult the terrain was. I knew where Ben Nevis was positioned in relation to other mountains. I could see the way the population could have potentially been affected by the scenario presented in these books. I think being in the place where this book was set made me enjoy it more, but I do not think it made much of a difference in how I approached rating it. 
 Overall, this is a well written companion/pre-quel novel to TGWATG, but I think it would be hard for a new reader to begin with this book. It is very slow and relies on the reader having some context for the events that are occurring in this world. It does an interesting job with common genre tropes, but I just wish it had done more.