"A second chance doesn't mean you're in the clear. In many ways, it is the more difficult thing. Because a second chance means that you have to try harder. You must rise to the challenge without the blind optimism of ignorance."

I.....huh. After I got past my initial hangup with the minimalistic dialogue (seriously, not a quotation mark or other indication to be had here), this book sucked me in hard. Candace works for a publishing company in New York at a time when Shen Fever sweeps the world. The fever reduces people to their most basic elements, drying them out to a husk of their former selves and reducing them to mindless zombies where they repeat the most basic tasks they're familiar with endlessly. Somehow Candace and a handful of others remain immune(?) to this disease though, and they band together for survival. Interspersed with the present-day narrative is Candace's backstory leading up to and during the plague, where we learn more about her, about the flu, and about how the world reacts during a time of crisis.

I thought the depiction of the fevered was incredibly creepy, and had me on edge for a large part of Candace's post-apocalypse jaunt through the Midwest. This is what basically kept me going, because Candace herself ended up being incredibly frustrating as a main character. I wanted to root for her, but at the same time she basically shuts down during crisis and requires other people to push her into making decisions. I loved the depiction of the crumbling society as the plague gets going, and how the different people around Candace react.

What I didn't like was the ending. Or, rather, the absence of an ending. I honestly had tuned in so completely to the story that when I hit the acknowledgements page, I thought my ebook had skipped. I don't mind ambiguous endings, but this was just basically a non-ending. We just....stop having more chapters. Incredibly frustrating. The story framework also requires you to be invested in the satire about capitalism and being a corporate slave for it to really have an impact.

So, three stars for it being an enjoyable, satirical read with an unsatisfying conclusion.