Kaelyn and her family have moved backed to the Canadian island where she grew up. She would prefer to spend her time watching animals and being by herself but decides that now she is back she is going to be more outgoing and more involved at school. Then people start getting sick and it seems like a virus is sweeping across the island. It starts with a sore throat and then a terrible itch, progressing to a point where you lose all social inhibitions and you eventually die.
Kaelyn’s father is a microbiologist and the main doctor at the hospital so she has an inside track but that doesn’t keep her mother alive when she gets sick. Then her brother starts spending more and more time away from home and eventually Kaelyn ends up in the hospital sick herself but she is one of a few that survive the attack.
Now that she is immune she starts doing whatever she can to help other people but there are some who are only out to save themselves and turn very dangerous. The island is under quarantine and everyone who isn’t sick is just trying to survive.
As Kaeyln loses more and more people she knows to the virus she finds new friends and tries to rebuild what life she can as the virus begins to wear down.
You could compare this book to Susan Pfeffer’s Life As We Knew It. Kaeyln tells this story through her journal entries written to her former best friend who know lives in the United States. You could compare this book to Susan Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It. For quite awhile after you read it whenever you hear someone sneeze or see them scratch or hear them complain of a sore throat it is hard not to wonder if a virus is starting in your community. 308 pages
Recommended by: Joleen Waltman, Librarian, Idaho USA
