The trouble with writing believable science fiction in a contemporary or near-future setting is that the reader has to willingly suspend a great deal of disbelief. It's a familiar setting, so chances are not a lot of things have changed by then, scientific progress is advancing, things are evolving, but the book's setting and plot should be believable enough for the reader to think: holy shit, this could actually happen. This book was well-written from a fictional point of view, but for anyone with a remotely scientific background, who has ever taken a Microbiology 101 class, or with an amateur's understanding of how the FDA works...this book requires a lot of teeth-grinding to get through. The next two paragraphs will mostly deal with science and pharmacology-related ranting related to the book, repeat. Scientific ranting. You have been warned. Skip them if you want to get to the meat of the review dealing with the actual characters and plot. 
 I am not a scientist by trade, but I have a good enough understanding of science, pharmacology, and god knows I've taken way too many lab classes to be a willing skeptic when reading this book. I have to admit, Mira Grant did an excellent job with the scientific jargon in this novel. The lab write-ups, the sterility of the SymboGen environment, the constant exposure to a laboratory and hospital environment, and the italicized scientific names for the parasite species all serve to disguise the fact that it doesn't seem like she ever took an introductory lab class. The year is 2027; not so far from now. Unless the FDA approval process or standard lab procedures have drastically changed by then, I find this book to be lacking a lot of credibility. Within the first chapter, I groaned as we were given the description of a Ph.D doing research on a cadaver in her lab. She doesn't use gloves because as she stated, the species is inert and completely safe. No! No! NO! You always use gloves in the lab, particularly when you operate on a dead corpse. Animal, human. It doesn't matter! There is always a risk; blood, bodily fluid, bacteria, viruses. You never know when a lab species is dangerous; there is no such thing as complete safety. Gloving is not optional, EVER! A genius Ph.D scientist who doesn't follow elementary lab procedures? Stupid! Adherence to lab rules is a must, children! 
 I could not help thinking as I was reading this book that so much trouble could have been averted had the actual FDA process been followed. I mean, it's not a perfect process by any means, since there have been plenty of craptastic drugs released in the past resulting in horrifying fetal disfigurements, among many other terrible side effects. Since then, FDA regulations and the process of getting a drug approved have been much stricter; many, many trials on human subjects are absolutely required for a drug to be proven as safe for human use. It is an expensive, time-consuming procedures, running well past 10 years sometimes, and with a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Few drugs make it past the approval process, as little as 10%. Even then, the drug is not perfect. New side effects are constantly regulated and reported every day, and drugs are constantly monitored. SymboGen...gah! They got this parasite approved, tested, and implanted within millions of people within ten years?! MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. This is, as the CEO of SymboGen puts it, "universal health care." With all the hullabaloo going on about universal health care/AKA Obamacare these days regarding people not wanting regulation over their own health, does it really make sense that so many people are willing to get an implant within their body, when the implant is a parasite? It's supposed to be beneficial, sure. Plenty of things are beneficial, it doesn't mean people actually do them. Getting millions of people to put down the fucking donut is an impossibility in itself, but a parasite is a whole other matter. The thing is, parasites are a really icky thing for a lot of people. It's a primal fear of the unnatural. Humans prefer structure; worms, snakes, spiders, anything long and creepy and crawly and slimy lacking limbs or with excessive limbs are a turnoff. The thought of millions willing to go through this, so soon, stretches the imagination. The idea that the FDA would allow this extremely invasive parasitic implant to go on the market within such a short period of time, is highly dubitable. 
 Ok, end rant. Breathe...breathe... 
 The book itself, suspension of disbelief aside, is pretty damn good. I am generally not a fan of Mira Grant, but she's done it this time. This book was absorbing, informative, the narrative style took some getting used to, but ended up being extremely effective. The chapters are interspersed with narratives, slices of information, be it from a supposed "interview" or a news blurb, or even a poem or quote from a literary work that's somewhat related to the book's theme. It annoyed me at first, but the little bit of information ended up being very useful and enlightening regarding the plot as it unfolds. 
 In the future, parasites are a thing. They provide the essence of health care. Get a parasite implanted in you, and your health care needs are taken care of forever! You know those birth control implants? No need to take a pill every day? Well, these parasites do it ten times better. No need to take any kind of medicine again. Ever. They're like universal health care implant. Got a health issue? Your parasite will deal with it! The thing is...they're acting up. Suddenly, people with the implants are developing sleeping sickness...first, they fall asleep. They fall into a stupor. They shamble around (zombies!!!!!). Then...they become aggressive. It's like The Walking Dead becoming 28 Days Later. The premise is awesome, and the development of the plot is fantastic. It is very slow initially as we follow our main narrator, and I admit I lost my patience at times, but it develops considerably faster past the 30-40% mark. The twists and turns the plot took hit me like a pick-up truck. I think I'm pretty good at predicting where a story will go, and I thought this book was going to be predictable. I was wrong. 
 Our main character is Sally. She is, to put it kindly, a brat. Sally has forgotten who she is thanks to amnesia resulting from a severe car accident when she was, according to her sister, playing chicken with a bus. She may not remember who she was, and that may be a good thing. The previous Sally was frankly, a huge bitch. Actually, the new Sal is not much better. She may not be a bitch, but man is she annoying. She is 26, but acts like a teenager. Sal behaves like a willful child at times, rebelling against the authority figure, rebelling against SymboGen, while knowing that they held and still hold the key to her survival. She has a love/hate relationship with the corporation in the truest sense of the word. Her life is saved thanks to the transplant, and she is being medically covered in every way while under their protection, but she is also in their control; Sal feels more like a guinea pig than a functional human at times. I could sympathize with her on this, except she is just so whiny. She is a petulant, rebellious teenager. Her amnesia is quite total, she is barely functional, and had to relearn the English language. Sal has done surprisingly well since, but her mental development really seemed to have stopped at the age of fourteen. Thankfully, she does grow up through the course of the book, and ended up to be considerably more competent than for which I initially gave her credit. 
 I love the supporting characters, and how they're portrayed. There is a diverse cast, there are people who aren't white (gasp!), there are people who are gay, straight, and just experimenting. It is never a big deal, there's no underlying Message. It is a realistic portrayal of people that any of us could know in real life, and that's part of what made this book so believable, despite the scientific quirks. 
 It may or may not be the author's intent, but I see a lot of moral themes in this book. The greed of corporations, the power of pharmaceutical giants...and they are pretty damn powerful. There are a lot of moral debates and power plays where pharmaceuticals are involved; they are a major billion-dollar industry. Follow the money. It works every time. They have numerous lobbyists, and their methods of wooing doctors into prescribing their drugs are questionable at best. There's also the question of playing god. It's a theme in Frankenstein, and it's a theme in this book. It is playing god, what the scientists in this book have done, and it inevitably comes back to bite them in the ass. Just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean you should. It's on a microscopic scale, there is no splicing together of salvaged body part, it is more genomic splicing, but the results are no less devastating. 
 Overall, this was an enormously enjoyable read, considerably more well-written and better than the silly premise would have you believe. Highly recommended. 
 I received this book as an advanced review copy from Netgalley.