Parasite
If you think about this book too hard, I imagine it would all fall apart. The concept requires a pretty significant leap of faith, and the science hangs together pretty loosely. It's very far-fetched. But if you can accept the premise - people have started voluntarily ingesting tapeworms as a form of preventative health care and now those tape worms are trying to take over - then you get a fun, well-paced book with a few moments of true terror. The suspense in this book is really top-notch.
The book follows Sal, who was in a car crash six years prior and miraculously woke up from her come right when her family was about to pull the plug. She has no memory of her life prior to the coma and has spent the years since as a guinea pig, as her doctors try to figure out how she made such a complete recovery. Her relationship with her family, particularly her father, is one of the best parts of the book, as they all try to navigate the new normal.
But all around her people are starting to turn into zombies (okay, not really, but it's the best approximation I can make and seems fitting in light of Grant's other trilogy) and no one knows why. As Sal starts to get answers, most of the people in her life prove themselves to be complete assholes of some sort or another. Sure, they all have competing agendas, and she doesn't exactly act trustworthy all the time, but everyone manages to make a bad situation worse. Which is normally frustrating, but here just let me write off everyone as a big, old jerk.
So, yes, this was a pretty quick read, and I had a lot of fun with it. Grant's is either not great at foreshadowing or too good at it. Either way, I saw the big twist ending coming about 50 pages in (this has been true of her other books as well) so it didn't have quite the emotional punch it should have. Mostly it left me frustrated with the main character for not figuring it out earlier.
It's likely the rest of the series will have some fun playing with sentience and identity. And since Sal and her boyfriend have teamed up with the worst of the bad guys mostly because her one virtue is honesty, there could be some fun shenanigans and moral grey areas to come.
The book follows Sal, who was in a car crash six years prior and miraculously woke up from her come right when her family was about to pull the plug. She has no memory of her life prior to the coma and has spent the years since as a guinea pig, as her doctors try to figure out how she made such a complete recovery. Her relationship with her family, particularly her father, is one of the best parts of the book, as they all try to navigate the new normal.
But all around her people are starting to turn into zombies (okay, not really, but it's the best approximation I can make and seems fitting in light of Grant's other trilogy) and no one knows why. As Sal starts to get answers, most of the people in her life prove themselves to be complete assholes of some sort or another. Sure, they all have competing agendas, and she doesn't exactly act trustworthy all the time, but everyone manages to make a bad situation worse. Which is normally frustrating, but here just let me write off everyone as a big, old jerk.
So, yes, this was a pretty quick read, and I had a lot of fun with it. Grant's is either not great at foreshadowing or too good at it. Either way, I saw the big twist ending coming about 50 pages in (this has been true of her other books as well) so it didn't have quite the emotional punch it should have. Mostly it left me frustrated with the main character for not figuring it out earlier.
It's likely the rest of the series will have some fun playing with sentience and identity. And since Sal and her boyfriend have teamed up with the worst of the bad guys mostly because her one virtue is honesty, there could be some fun shenanigans and moral grey areas to come.
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