If you're trying to stay away from anything that feels like the COVID pandemic, I'd recommend probably not picking this one up. While this is about a plague rather than a pandemic, a lot of the events feel very similar to what happened at the beginning of COVID. Things escalated much more quickly, too.

Anyway! I was expecting a more tense thriller kind of story with this one, and while those elements are there, it's more of a character driven story, focused on the teens in this detention center. Besides the plague and trying to survive, there's not much a plot driving the story. It's definitely the relationships and what transpires between this particular group of teens.

There's good representation here, with a variety of identities represented throughout the story. For the most part, I didn't necessarily feel emotionally invested in their story, but maybe that's because it felt too real? I can't quite put my finger on it. The descriptions of all of the measures they were taking against the plague, though, did feel very real. I did appreciate the world building and the extra pieces of news and information between the chapters. It helped build the intensity overall.