If what gripped you in Sweet Tooth was Gus and Jepperd’s brutal trek—dodging militias like Abbot’s men, scavenging for food, and clinging to scraps of kindness—then The Road will land hard. A father and son push a cart along ash-choked highways, facing cannibals and starvation with the same spare, knife-edge tension you felt when Gus and Jepperd crossed hostile towns or hid from the Preserve’s hunters. It’s that same raw, intimate fight to keep a fragile bond alive in a world that wants to extinguish it.

Loved how the hunted hybrid kid in Sweet Tooth slowly becomes the heart of a makeshift family—Gus with Jepperd, Singh, and the others despite the horrors of Abbot and the Preserve? The Girl With All the Gifts mirrors that dynamic. Melanie, an extraordinary child born from the plague’s aftermath, travels with her protective teacher Miss Justineau and hard-bitten soldiers. As dangers stack up, their uneasy alliance shifts into a tender, complicated loyalty—much like how Gus turns strangers into something like home.

If Jepperd’s evolution from mercenary handler to fierce guardian of Gus hit you—through betrayals, rescues from the Preserve, and that long push north toward the plague’s origins—The Passage offers a similarly powerful bond. Federal agent Brad Wolgast kidnaps the orphan Amy for a secret program, then risks everything to save her as the world falls apart. Watching their relationship deepen under siege will echo the hard-won trust between Gus and Jepperd.

If the pulse of Sweet Tooth for you was sheer survival—Gus and Jepperd rationing food, avoiding ambushes, making grim choices to stay alive while rumors swirl about the plague’s Alaskan origin—The Dog Stars lives in that space. Hig, a pilot in a decimated Colorado, flies patrols, hunts, and measures every risk in a world where a wrong turn means death. The quiet dread and small mercies feel like those roadside pauses when Gus finds a safe barn or a can of beans, and it asks the same question: what do you hold onto when almost everything is gone?

If the speculative heart of Sweet Tooth—hybrid children, Dr. Singh’s murky research, and the plague’s strange biology—hooked you more than the tech details, Borne is a perfect fit. Rachel adopts a mysterious biotech creature she names Borne, and their tender, unsettling bond unfolds amid a ruined city ruled by corporate experiments gone feral. It’s the same soft-SF focus on relationships and moral lines in the shadow of science that created beings like Gus.