wow. This took me less than 12 hours to read, something I haven't done in a while. But the writing really draws you in and the world is so pungent that it's hard to put the book down. I can see what people are saying about the ending being a little unsatisfying, but I really feel like that kind of ending is what the book called for. It reminded me a lot of the ending of Courtney Summers' This is Not a Test (which later got a novella that tied the ending up a bit more pretty, and I enjoyed it but I don't think it was *completely* necessary for an understanding of the ending of the original novel. All it really did was help out readers that felt unsatisfied as it branches out into the rest of the world beyond the setting of the original novel. Which, really, is further proof that the novel ended the best way it could have, a different ending only belonging in another work). If you've read that, you know what I'm talking about.
I still had a bit of a hard time rating this, though I'm not too sure why. Maybe because I finished it so fast, I never really concentrated enough on the characters and their development throughout the novel. Or maybe it really was that fast-paced to not focus on the characters, rather the environment around them forcing their bodies to mutate... or so you think. At the end, though, I'm still going to give it 5/5 stars, because I whole-heartedly will recommend this to people who would/do enjoy the genre.