Pandemic by Yvonne Ventresca

genre: young adult

Liliana’s life with her parents is stable and comfortable, despite the challenges she’s already faced in high school. When a strange flu starts to make the news, her anxiety level increases as the number of cases skyrockets. As more and more people get sick in Liliana’s town, her community begins to break down until she realizes that unless she makes some changes herself, the world as she’s known it will be gone.

 I decided to try this one because I love a disaster survival story. While it certainly read easily enough and is believable as a modern story, it just didn’t wow me. I didn’t love our main character - some of her backstory made her complicated in ways that played out awkwardly for me from a reader’s standpoint. Sometimes the action felt way too fast and almost stumbling over itself and other times I wanted more. I think, if I’m honest, it’s probably just a book that would be better for teens, as a crossover for me it fell flat. It’s got redeeming qualities and I would hand it to a teen that I liked, it just didn’t do it for me.