PRE-PUB REVIEW: Pandemic by Yvonne Ventresca

Imagine a new flu virus that combines deadliness with speed of transmission.  Imagine you are a girl with a few anxiety issues who might also be a germaphobe.  Lily is a high school student whom we discover through the course of the novel, has suffered through being assaulted by everyone’s favorite teacher.  As a result, she has some fears regarding personal contact.  Add to that her father’s occupation as an editor for a magazine devoted to infectious disease, and you can see where this is going.  The “blue flu” kills it’s victims by causing their lungs to fill with fluid.  They become unable to breathe and turn blue before expiring.  Lily’s parents are both out of town, (convenient, right?) when the epidemic hits her New Jersey town and people start going off the rails.  Keeping in contact with them through phone and text, her dad tells her where he has hidden some anti-virals and instructs her to stay home and watch out for looters.  It is only a matter of hours later that looters break in—fortunately, Lily was not home at the time.  While on walk about, she rescues a neighbor’s baby whose parents have both died and makes friends with the new boy down the block.  Together, they get the other surviving teens in town together to try and help where they can.  Society doesn’t take long to break down, once the blue flu hits.  Police and first responders are quickly overwhelmed by the number of dead and looters and black marketeers appear within a week.  I would like to think this is an over dramatization, but if people actually died in the numbers described—no ration is actually given but going off the main characters who die, it looks like about a 50% survival rate—I am afraid these predictions might not be far off.  The good news is that there are still good people around and that they team up to help each other survive.  When I first started this book, I was afraid it would be bleak, and in some ways it was.  I won’t ruin it by telling who dies, but suffice it to say that a lot of people do.  However, even though there is a certain amount of bleakness in the plot, the underlying theme is that of hope.  Refreshing, really.  A fairly tightly plotted disaster book with a dash of romance, what’s not to like?

Scheduled to be published May 2014

June Cleaver’s Ratings:  Language—PG; Nudity—PG;  Sexual Content—PG;  GLBT Content—G;  Violence—PG13  there are a couple of scenes with corpses resulting from the flu.  The descriptions are not graphic, but they are realistic;  Substance Abuse—PG  mostly underage smoking;  Adult Themes—PG13  Lily was sexually assaulted.  It happens off-page, but she has flashbacks and it is discussed in the context of her anxieties. 

Robin’s Comments:  I enjoyed this book as a change of pace from your average teen book.  Yes, the parents are absent, but they are loved and needed, not dysfunctional.  Lily is very mature, but still a kid.  She has to work through her anxieties about germs and about hoarding in order to help others.  The author handled this sensitively without making it too easy for her.  Her fears are realistic and she has to work to overcome them.  Altogether a well done effort.