"Of such small moments are disasters made."Friends, it pains me to say that this was just not the book for me. This is my first Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire) read and while I absolutely adored the plot, unfortunately the writing style and narrative voice just did not work for me. This is definitely a case of right book, wrong reader.
"Many of them would continue to leave their homes even as they began feeling unwell. The virus would spread. The virus always spreads."Lisa Morris is an 8 year old girl on vacation in Florida. She is starting to feel a little sick, but it is their last day and she doesn't want to miss out on going to the amusement park for one last time. By the time she gets home to California, she's very sick and thanks to trams, rides, and airplane rides -- so are hundreds of others. Lisa's Patient Zero of the Morris Disease outbreak and the first casualty. The world is forever changed.
The third person omniscient narrative style just didn't work for me here. The first 20% or so felt like a report, and even after the narrative voice kind of shifted to focus a bit on Dr. Izzy Gauley I never really connected with any of the characters. The novella is definitely plot driven, and the consequence of the narrative voice for me was that it was hard to care about the characters.
A world that had been willing to reject the efficacy of vaccines suddenly found itself on the verge of being forced to live without them, and it was not prepared."I found the continual reminder of herd immunity and the issue of the anti-vaccine movement to be on the heavy handed side. Initially I was very interested in that as a starting point for this speculative fiction piece on potential outbreaks, but it was harped on so repetitively throughout the narrative that I became almost numb to it. It also seemed like an odd choice to me given the fact that the story is told in third-person omniscient: had it been a first-person narrative the repetition would have at least made a bit more sense to me (although I still would have been annoyed).
Overall the narrative style of this book was not for me, but I really enjoyed the overall plot and twist at the end. In talking with Destiny, I have learned that the narrative style is the author's stylistic choice, so I definitely would recommend this novella to fans of Mira Grant.
REPRESENTATION: lgbtiap+ (gay side characters), the world is effortlessly racially diverse
CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS: death, grief, loss of a loved one
Many thanks to the publisher for sending me an eARC via NetGalley for review. Quotations are taken from an uncorrected proof and may change upon publication. Buddy read with Destiny
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