A review by the_gandy_man
The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

3.0

It's fine. The beginning is great, but then it's a pretty standard zombie travel story. There's not much that interests me for the bulk of the book. I like Melanie. I like how she's smart about managing her affliction, contrasting with how Justineau is appalled that Melanie is treated like an animal. There's some moral questions at play which are interesting, and the ending is pretty cool. But mostly it's fairly boring for most of it.

It also feels somewhat derivative of The Last of Us. It's a pretty different story but many elements, such as the disease being cordyceps and our young girl protagonist being immune and people want to dissect her to find a cure. The Last of Us came out a year before this book. I don't know how long books take, but I'd imagine this is all coincidence. It still doesn't help my experience with this book that I could so easily compare it to a story that is so much better.