Infected

by Sophie Littlefield

Sophie Littlefield is a favorite author of mine. Her adult Aftertime series is magnificent, and her YA Banished series is a winner too. Her other books have been hit or miss for me, and I'm afraid INFECTED leans more to the latter. This face-paced thriller begins with some promise but devolves pretty quickly into a convoluted and rather redundant YA book.

The premise is fun and there isn't a single line of down time in the whole book, which makes it a very quick read (the whole story spans less than two days). And I liked the clues that pulled the characters from one action-packed scene to the next (though I wouldn't have minded having some of the cryptography explained instead of identified and solved in Carina's mind. Perhaps if the book had been written in 1st person instead of 3rd, that could have been done).

The 3rd person POV also contributed to the detachment I felt with both Carina and Tanner. I never became as invested in them as I had hoped. Neither of them had enough depth to feel real, not even with the handful of flashbacks to show how their relationship developed. Tanner especially felt flat. Really, you could pull out any line of dialogue of theirs and not be able to identify whose it was.

Overall, the book was meh. unremarkable characters, equally unremarkable romance, and a plot that moved swiftly but dully. Littlefield has written much, much better books.