This entire review contains brief spoilers for the beginning of the book.

I found this on Kindle Unlimited in March, at the start of our current Covid-19 pandemic. I intended to read it then, but my better mental health angels prevailed and I waited. This book was published in 2014, and so, is not about our current pandemic, but about a fictional H5N1 virus that has an incubation period of only a few short hours with rapid onset of symptoms. Like the Spanish Flu, the disease is worst in those in their late teens to 50s.

This books follows the character of Lilianna, or "Lil" as she's called by those who know her. She is the typical YA female protagonist, and not in the best of ways. She's Good with a CAPITAL G. She organizes community food drives and wins awards for her Goodness. She's just that Good.

But now she's a bit neurotic, thanks to a sexual assault from a now former teacher at her school. Now Lil wears black and smokes and has a strange obsession for being prepared for everything form terrorist attacks to storms to infectious diseases. She's still Good, of course. She just fills the spare closet with cans of beans. At least she pays for them herself, with her own job of stocking shelves as the local grocery store, which is mentioned exactly once and then promptly forgotten about when Shit Hits The Fan.

Lil's backstory serves only as a plot device to get extra cans of beans into the house and to create some tension between Lil and her former friend, Kayla. Given Lil's dad's wacky job of writing for an infectious disease magazine, it would make sense for Dad to stock the pandemic supplies and for Lil to be a happy beneficiary. But, it's not an unforgivable plot point and it is handled decently - although it's never truly discussed that it's NOT HER FAULT. Lil ponders once why her teacher chose to assault her when there were prettier girls around, but it's never made clear that she was the perfect target. Lil has the typical YA novel absentee parents, she's an only child and not riding to school with others, and she's so Good that she's bound to internalize the incident as her fault and not tell anyone, right? For parents that pretend to be so concerned with Lil's increasing neurosis, they seem to schedule work trips at exactly the same time and don't plan for anyone to stay with their easily spazzed-out child.

But, I digress.

A couple of other brief issues:
- Senior citizens are older, not enfeebled or stupid or less altruistic or focused on only baking ten thousand cookies in the midst of a pandemic. I understand that our teenage protagonist need to take the stage, but GOOD GRAVY.
- There are some practical issues not considered, like water and sewage problems as a possibility in a prolonged electrical outage.
- That ending. FLUFFY.

The story itself is interesting enough. For the intended audience of teen girls, it's a good fit. The male characters, both Ethan and Jay are apparently swoon-worthy enough - until Ethan is a huge selfish jerk when Lil faces a devastating loss. None of the characters are described in too much detail physically, so it's easy for readers to layer the faces of their own crushes onto the characters. In fact, not too much of anything is described in detail. This is a book completely without flowery prose or poetry. It is entirely concrete with nothing abstract in its scope or sequence. This makes it a perfect high interest read for lower grade-level readers. Someone at a middle 4th grade reading level wouldn't have a problem with this book. Despite it's 392 page length, it's not intimidating in the least.

I'll be adding it to my classroom library shelf because it will fit the interest and needs of my readers.