Emotionally gripping and thought provoking

I took me a while to figure out how to 'take' this book, but when I got there I really enjoyed it. The characters - of which there are a good number - are very well put together with individual outlooks and personalities. The tension rises pretty slowly in the early stages of the plot, but there comes a point when it escalates quite suddenly and it's absolutely worth waiting around for. Injustice - or misdirected justice - is a big theme of this book. One emotion I experienced a lot was anger at historical America because of the clear allegory between the way the 'creepers' are treated and the way certain other minorities have been treated in the States...and we're only talking about the late 70s early 80s.

There are some real heartbreaking moments when justice is handed out wrongly, and the plague kids all get even more interesting as the story progresses.

There was a point when it started to look like a certain outcome in the book was inevitable, and I spend the rest of it waiting to be surprised by something else happening. But actually, the inevitable outcome it the one that actually comes about. Now perhaps that is the very point of the story, that some things just can't be prevented. But I also found it a little bit deflating. A more satisfying end in some cases would have been certain people beinf forced to realise they were wrong. For example, without giving spoilers away, I found it immensely unsatisfying that Amy is never really made to own up to a pretty huge lie she tells at about the 60% mark which had far reaching consequences.

But all in all, I did very much enjoy it. It certainly got its hooks into me. I would have just preferred more of a 'profound resolution' ending rather than a "I guess it was always going to happen" kind of ending.

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