Reviews with content warning for Medical content - Contagion

Contagion is a fast-paced soft science fiction YA with multiple POV characters about a small group trying to survive a rescue mission gone very wrong. There's two explicitly queer women (one of which is a POV character) and I liked the dynamic between them. The team seems pretty racially diverse, but the story doesn't dive deep into their backstories since everyone is mostly focused on not dying. There's no romance in the book and the whole thing is very focused on action, which I liked. Based on how it ended, I do wonder if there will be a romance in the sequel.

My only quibble is that the premise lost a lot of its spark for me once it's confirmed that the contagion is

bacteria that causes most people to become zombies and some people to get super-powers like super-speed and telepathy

. It was partly expected but it became a little hard to believe. But it is a action YA so I can't really fault it.

Content Warnings

typedtruths's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Reread #1 (Dec 2020): ★★★★☆

remind me, why did i think reading about contagions was a good idea during a real-life pandemic

Original Read (Aug 2019): ★★★☆☆

when you think you rated a book five stars but goodreads says you gave it three stars 🤦‍♀️

➸ Trigger warnings for

ableism (including denied work due to medical condition), parental abandonment recount, self-harm, suicide by gun (on-page in the prologue & mentioned later), graphic blood & gore depiction, dead bodies, physical injuries & illness, eyeball trauma, contagion (central theme), medical emergency & serious (terminal) illness of a loved one, needles & syringes, blood test, emesis, death of a cousin, death of a father in a military-related explosion mentioned, death of a colleague, death of parents recounted, death from strangulation mentioned, death by electrocution, murder & attempted murder, knife & gun violence, kidnapping, drowning mentioned, and blizzards & severe storms

.

▷ Representation: Thea (mc) Turkish-Korean; Nova (mc) brown, vision impaired (degenerative eye condition) & sapphic; Dylan (sc) sapphic & recovered addict; Lisbeth (sc) tremor in her hand; Sullivan (sc) POC.

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