Storyline: 2/5 
 Characters: 2/5 
 Writing Style: 2/5 
 World: 2/5 
 I'm obviously not the target audience for these books. I like thorough worldbuilding, enjoy literary flourishes, and while reading I try to live in and take seriously the world the author created. 
 One of my biggest complaints about the book is that it is written from the perspective of someone who hasn't lived through the zombie apocalypse. Supposedly all of her main characters know nothing else. The telling is saturated with observations that would only be uttered or thought by someone living outside the Newsflesh world. For instance when the main character has to make a speedy escape from chasing zombies, he thinks about how he didn't even have time to put his seatbelt on. His seatbelt?! That's not going to be something going through the mind of our 20ish, danger-loving, post-Rising, adrenaline junky. The same thing goes for his remarks about being tough enough to sleep on a couch. Sleeping on a couch is "roughing it"! The book was filled with repeated cliches about "shooting first and asking later" or other such tough-guy musings that wouldn't have been thought by the characters inhabiting the world Grant created. 
 That world here was also a disappointment. One of the strongest aspects of the first in the series was the juxtaposition of a technologically advanced first-world with the zombie-infested post-apocalypse. Grant was lazy here and didn't develop that world further. In fact, the whole blogging aspect was even more dated than it was in the original, and we had to suffer through minidramas about overly-strict spam filters on email. 
 I was abashed at how closely Feed emulated the Scooby Doo villain reveal scene. In this one Grant tries to address that. I got the idea that she was trying to make fun of herself and the genre a little, but she also made a real effort to plug the plothole. The result was worse than the initial effort: the seriousness of the retcon kept Grant from making any claims of satire or metafictional intentions, but the incredible new plot developments pushed it to the level of really bad television writing. 
 There were a few positive elements. Grant tried to bring a little more science into the story. I liked the platonic relationship between brother and sister. Also, Mira Grant kept the excitement coming, and this was the easiest reading I've done since my last John Scalzi book (which, I think, is of similar quality). 
 This belongs to a genre - and I don't mean the zombie one. This is a young adult thriller that is supposed to be gossiped about and read en masse by high school and college students looking for something breezy, amusing, and self-congratulating. I'm far from that scene.