Apocalyptic Romance Review: Outbreak Protocol
My rating: 4 of 5 stars | Goodreads | Amazon | Genres: apocalyptic romance, medical romance, medical thriller, pandemic romance
Premise
C.G. Macington brings us a gripping apocalyptic romance set during a devastating global pandemic threatening to end the world as we know it. I signed up to read this ARC, knowing the apocalyptic themes could trigger me. I think a reading about an extremely deadly global pandemic could trigger the whole world, as we have lived through, and somewhat still are living through, a global pandemic of our own. The virus in Outbreak Protocol, however, makes COVID-19 look like the common cold. So our pandemic was much less virulent but people still have trauma from events that happened there. Especially if you lost loved ones from Covid.
Apocalyptic… Romance?
The combination of a romance and a medical thriller drew me in initially. It seemed an interesting place to set a romance. But let me tell you, it delivered on what I anticipated: a gut-clenching journey of discovery and survival for the two main characters and also for the world at large.
Hook
Within the first few chapters, readers will be hooked. The pacing is just right to set the tone of impending world breakdown. The apocalyptic situation is laid out within a few short chapters. The lonely scientist, driven by numbers, is tracking outbreaks of infectious disease. The on-the-ground emergency room physician who starts to notice disturbing trends. Hospital administration would much rather bury its head in the sand than proactively deal with a growing situation.
This setup is both hand-wrenching and exciting, setting up the action. And my expectations were met: events start to feel like they are cascading out of control quickly and in brutal fashion.
Blurb
One doctor saves lives from behind a screen. The other saves them with his hands. When the world ends, they are each other’s only hope.
Dr. Felix Müller trusts his gut, and his gut tells him the horrifying new illness tearing through his Hamburg ER is no ordinary flu. When his superiors ignore the mounting body count, Felix risks his career on a single, desperate email to a reclusive, brilliant epidemiologist who is his last resort.
Dr. Erik Lindqvist trusts in data, not gut feelings. For the reclusive scientist, emotions are a liability. He arrives in Hamburg expecting to correct a flawed analysis, but instead finds a city on the brink of collapse and a frontline doctor whose fiery compassion threatens to shatter the walls around his heart.
Forced into an uneasy alliance, the two men are the city’s first and last line of defense. But as the virus consumes Hamburg and military law is declared, their professional friction ignites into a desperate and dangerous intimacy. In the quiet moments between disasters, they find a connection that could be their only comfort—or a fatal distraction.
As the death toll climbs and the city is sealed from the world, they are in a desperate race for a cure. But the greatest threat might not be the evolving pathogen—it could be the terrifying choices they are forced to make about how much they are willing to sacrifice… and who.
Outbreak Protocol is a gut-wrenching, epic MM romance set against the backdrop of an apocalyptic medical thriller. A perfect story of opposites attract, hurt/comfort, and the found family that can rise from the ashes of the world. Prepare to have your heart seized.
220 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 5, 2025
Genres: medical romance, medical thriller, apocalyptic romance, pandemic romance
The Pandemic Rundown: Plot Summary
Emergency Room doctor, Felix Müller, worked in pathology before he moved to the ER, driven by a need to connect directly with patients, to remember the humanity of practicing medicine, and not get mired in statistics. He has his finger, literally, on the pulse of Hamburg, Germany. He starts to see the concerning patterns of a growing novel pathogen running unchecked and undiscovered through ER patients presenting with concerning symptoms.
Patients have the sorts of fevers that are more common in warm, humid areas of the world. Fevers that come with haemorrhaging and complete organ shutdown. Viral hemorrhagic fevers are terrifying, honestly. Think: Ebola.
Felix’s gut tells him to start tracking data, so he does. Meticulously. His boss, though, largely wants to ignore the trends, dismissing them as a normal flu season. Felix knows instinctively that more is going on than a normal flu, especially as people continue to die.
He Risks His Career
After being dismissed over and over, and with mounting concern, he risks his career. He’s compelled to do the right thing. He breaks the chain of command and sends his findings to an ECDC scientist, Dr. Erik Lindqvist, who arrives on scene and quickly takes stock of the growing disaster.
Working together to mitigate the disaster, the two forge a bond that’s fast, fiery, and deep: the type of bond that happens because of trauma and seals the two together into a cohesive unit. They’re stronger together, and they absolutely need to be strong if they are both going to survive.
Character Growth Is Key
Dr. Lindqvist, a Swedish last name that I have little grasp on how to actually pronounce, is like a princess in a closed-off tower at first. He doesn’t see the numbers in his data as people. He set his life up purposely like this, after the death of his sister when he was young, which mentally destroyed him. Data is safe, even if the numbers represent real human lives at stake.
Dr. Müller, on the other hand, forcibly changed his life so he would see each patient as a rich human life worth saving. As the novel progresses, Felix’s perspective helps Erik to reshape his understanding of his role: he wants to stop the pandemic to save these real human lives, and his empathy grows beyond the numbers on his spreadsheet. He thaws, in a way, to better understand the urgency to save the world, as the virus causes society to come tumbling down.
Relationship Rings True
Relationships in times like this, apocalyptic times of strife, they develop quickly and without pretext. The two men are drawn to each other because each recognizes the strength within the other. They admire how they operate; they see things they want to emulate in the other.
Their partnership is perfect for an apocalyptic romance, and comes together in what would otherwise be a rush, but it works here. It’s not a romance that’s forcibly wedged into a medical thriller about a global apocalypse. Their developing feelings feel authentic and real. Full of determination to save each other and those important to them, the strong feelings they develop are hot and fast and steadfast. There’s no time to waste in terms of saving humanity or their growing feelings.
World-Building & Atmosphere
As the virus takes hold, the military takes over and works determinedly to keep the virus from spreading beyond Hamburg. What was once a normal hospital ER quickly becomes an apocalyptic hellscape. People are dying all over, bleeding from their eyes and mouths, medical staff are being infected, it’s a traumatic picture that will have readers remembering the early days of Covid and the panic that overtook hospitals as they became overburdened by the number of sick.
This element is a potential trigger for some people, and readers should monitor their own feelings. We just got through the COVID pandemic not so long ago, and reliving the feelings with a fictional virus that is MUCH worse might cause some dark thoughts to resurface, especially because it’s done well in this book. Readers will remember the fear and uncertainty, the tractor-trailers of bodies, the general breakdown of systems, all too well. In fact, COVID is mentioned. This book is set in a world where COVID happened sometime in the recent past.
Medical Realism
I can’t fully speak to the medical realism in this story; I am not a doctor. But as a nonprofessional, it seems mostly implausible that a novel pathogen would have that high a Ro factor, or that high a fatality rate. But for the sake of the story, it’s an apocalyptic romance; it increases the urgency and works well. I also don’t put it past biology to evolve into such a virulent strain. Who knows what could happen, really.
Grows
One area I had questions about after reading is what happened to the rest of the response team. Before the final chapters, readers spend much page time with important side characters. Sarah, with her fiery Irish tenacity. Yuki and her eidetic memory analyze model after model of pandemic data. Aleksandr’s military precision sets the containment protocols.
Late in the book, after a lot of last-resort, horrible things happen in an attempt to contain the disastrous virus that will end humanity as we know it, the very tight-knit team that works together tirelessly for the rest of the book is just poof, gone.
Last Mentions
Yuki and Aleksandr are last mentioned at 90% completion. Sarah is last mentioned at 92%. As I read, I feared that meant they had died, but I wasn’t sure.
If someone’s death isn’t described on the page or mentioned, the reader doesn’t know. Mentally, I would like at least one line to know they’re alive and well at the end, because it’s a fairly bleak ending, even with our central characters HFN. I can’t say it’s a HEA because, well… Pandemic, ya know.
Recommendation
I enjoyed this story, but it is something entirely different from a lot of other MM romance subgenres. I tend to like unique things, and a lot of readers of MM romance do, so I recommend this book. However, watch your mental health on this one. We all carry hidden triggers from Covid times, whether it’s something we talk about these days or not.
Review Paragraph
I received a free copy of this apocalyptic romance via BookSirens and am voluntarily leaving a review. I write reviews on my blog, Goodreads, Bookbub, Amazon, and more. If you want me to read and review your upcoming novel read my review policy and submit a contact form.
