I loved every moment I spent with this book. One of the best pandemic/apocalyptic novels I’ve read in a long time. 

The premise had me hesitant: a virus that’s a mix of covid and syphilis, that makes people extremely violent with lust. I was a little worried it would just be horrific descriptions of sexual assaults, but the way the author set up our protagonist was what made it all work. The story is told from the point of view an insanely sheltered Catholic teenager, Sophie. She’s that type of “all girls school, no movies, no tv, no internet, only books we approve of” sheltered. So when she describes these awful things that are happening around her, she doesn’t have the context or the vocabulary to really articulate what she’s seeing, so it’s not graphic in the least. It really reads more like zombie fiction; there’s some carnage, but the sexual elements aren’t front and center. Throughout the book, Sophie confronts ideas about god, religion, and sin that make her question everything she’s been taught. She’s finally learning about all of the things that she’s been kept from knowing or experiencing. She’s meeting new people who have different ideas and ways of being in the world, and asking herself questions about what she’s been told to believe. It’s about facing faith and all of the guilt and shame that can come with that. It’s also about surviving. Not just surviving this new virus, but surviving in this new world of grief and danger, overcoming guilt and shame. I loved the tightness of the timeline. It takes place over a matter of like 10 days, I think. This isn’t a post-apocalyptic book about society rebuilding and what happens after everything goes to shit; this book takes place right at the beginning of everything crumbling. In my house, we call this part of these stories “the pop-off,” meaning the initial chaos and destruction, not the aftermath. Highly, highly recommend this book!