I see what this book was going for but it wasn't for me.

It was going to end up on my dnf shelf after I hit 60 pages in and was frustrated that I was devoting time to it. I picked up from there a few days later out of curiosity and commitment and finished it quickly.

A lot of ideas felt... Unfinished? Overall these are themes I enjoy - early apocalypse survival, immigration, culture clash, seeking identity, etc... but the way it played out didn't really speak to me.

The epidemic was amusingly similar to our current pandemic, if only with the mask wearing (including funky designs), working from home, and companies going under. It turned people into zombies compulsively repeating their roles while neglecting themselves to the point of starvation and rot, and all this was set against a backdrop of the main character working a meaningless repetitive job. I'm not sure how necessary this metaphor was.