Contaminated by Em Garner Review

Contaminated by Em Garner is a post-apocalyptic YA novel, I won it on Goodreads. It's the story of Velvet and her sister, Opal. They are orphans as a result of a prion disease outbreak that is the result of a diet drink, ThinPro, being contaminated with unsafe proteins. The disease results in aggressive behavior, loss of speech, increased clumsiness, and other symptoms that give the infected a zombie-like appearance but without them actually being dead.

The book begins with Violet going to a kennel, where the neutralized, contaminated people (or Connies) are kept so that family members can reclaim them. The contaminated people are neutralized with a shock collar. Violet is looking for her mother.

Violet is struggling to survive and support her sister in this new world, she goes to school for half a day and then works the rest of the day. Though the contamination affect different areas of the country in different degrees, many basic services haven't been restored. There is martial law and curfews. Feral Connies still show up periodically, as the illness can lie dormant for extended periods of time based on how much a person drank and how contaminated the batch was.

I haven't read any of Em Garner's novels for adults, I hadn't even heard of her until running across this book on the FirstReads giveaway list. The story is an easy and quick read, it is well paced. The characters are pretty believable. There were a few spots that even made me laugh, especially one bit about kissing, boys, and pizza. It's an infection story more than a zombie one, but the world she set up works well. I look forward to reading the next book.

Happy reading!