took me a while to get to this one ,but I'm glad that i finally picked it up and give it a try , will be going on with the rest of the series ,well written and fast paced book, which ends with an awful cliffhanger.

This was a page turner for sure. The chapters were short, which was also nice. I always like to stop reading at the end of a chapter, so this book made it easy to do that.
I loved the medical aspects of the novel. The virus, how it started, how it spread, looking for a cure. I love a book with a good medical backdrop.
There was also some suspense! Part 4 had my heart beating out of my chest!

The beginning was hard to get into. Around part 2 it really picked up for me and had me reading quickly. This almost felt like two different novels meshed together – one where the focus was finding the lost girl and one with a killer flu like virus. It all ends up coming together, but the start didn’t mesh well for me.

Some of the conversation didn’t flow very naturally. There was also a part about family lineage that I felt like was thrown in only for shock value? Maybe in the second or third book it will be explained.

While I liked the medical aspects of the book, at times it was a little too science-y. She started talking about matter, anti-matter, particle accelerators and I was just as lost as could be. I do realize some people could feel this way about the medical aspect though.

All in all, it was a pretty solid read. Not a full four stars because I think it got too science-y and the start was hard to get into.

I would recommend Contagion. It was a good story with a solid start. I can’t wait to read the next books in the series!

An intriguing book to read after the effects of COVID-19, I initially struggled purely because of the real-life implications we have experienced as a whole, but once i got past that (it was more of an "its not you its me" situation) the book was completely engrossing and I devoured the book!

“They say I’m sick, and I need to be cured. But I don’t feel sick. Not any more.”

The book follows Callie who to her brother Kai is missing. Kai and his new fried Shay are on the search for her during an epidemic, especially as Shay was the last person to see her alive. However it transpires that Callie is alive and survived the disease (but she was kidnapped and experimented on, and unfortunately has suffered due to this) Callie is on a mission to break free from her lab confinement and Kai is on the search for her, can they find each other again whilst an epidemic rages throughout the world.

This book was completely fast paced, and there was a foreboding sense of dread throughout the book that really does provide the feels and spooks necessary for a dystopian/sci fi novel. Plus i loved the romance arc within the book, I was completely smitten, and I completely shipped Kai and Shay, and was intrigued watching their romance develop. The book is written from multiple perspective, so it is great reading from other perspectives, whilst also adding to the characters depths. My favourite has to be Callie though, her attitude completely shone through the book, and i was willing her own the entire time!

I would recommend this book to fans of Sci-Fi, i just personally wouldn't of read it so soon after my own lockdown!

My Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars! :)

Favorite Moment:
Anytime Shay talks about physics. As a future Chemist, I’m a sucker for science!

This book was a brilliant start to a plague-riddled dystopian trilogy that’s mixed with a healthy dose of science fiction! It’s got everything: a top-secret government project, kidnapping, murder, mystery, deceit, dark matter, and a love story. I first heard of the story at BookCon 2019 in NYC at the publisher’s booth and have been itching to read it ever since! I was even approved for the ARC on NetGalley in June of 2019, but life finds a way of getting in the way and I JUST NOW got to read it. Better late than never, especially when the reward is a book this good, right?! :D We’ll leave out the irony of finally getting to read about a flu-like epidemic thanks to a newfound abundance of free time from being in the middle of a flu-like pandemic…

Warning, there are mild spoilers ahead!

The story takes place in Scotland, where an underground lab is running a series of secret experiments. Nearby, the main character Shay lives with her mom in a small town. The area surrounding the lab is suddenly plunged into chaos when there is an explosion at the same time that Shay’s adventure begins. She, along with Kai—a boy from a nearby town that she meets by chance—embark on a journey to find out what happened to Kai’s sister Callie, but instead they begin to uncover the cause of the epidemic that is ravaging their home. From there, things only get worse as Shay falls ill and the epidemic spreads across Europe…

There’s so much more to this story than my vague synopsis, but I loathe spoilers. You’ll just have to check this one out for yourself and see what happens next—and let me know what you think!

Also, I listened to this on audio, but also have an ebook and a hardcover. I’m not obsessed or anything… 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Thank you to NetGalley, Charlesbridge Teen, and the author for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My apologies for it being a year late. (:

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this review copy of Contagion by Teri Terry.
Contagion is a YA pandemic novel about a trio of kids traipsing around Scotland trying to outrun a deadly outbreak of...something.
The pace of the story moves along quickly and isn’t stagnant or boring. Unfortunately even though it was over 432 pages I didn’t feel like the relationship between Kai and Shay was slow-burn enough and just ended up being some kind of instalove nonsense. The worst POV was Callie. She was jealous and whiny and generally unpleasant. I found that her entire part of the plot weakened the story. I wish that it would have stayed within the scope of a medical thriller and instead ventured too far into the fantastical and metaphysical and it was confusing for me. There were also too many coincidences and connections between Kai and Shay that made everything feel very convenient.
This was an okay medical thriller but I don’t think there is enough there for me with either the characters or the storyline to continue with the series.

Teri Terry's Contagion has been on my TBR list for awhile. Dystopian Fiction is one of my favorite genres, and with current world events, i.e. coronavirus, now seemed the perfect time to dive into this apocalyptic tale about the United Kingdom dealing with a similar outbreak. Unfortunately, I could tell from the very first chapter that this YA novel was not for me. With extremely short chapters alternating between the book's two female characters, I found this novel very difficult to follow or get into. I felt lost right from the beginning, which is not a good way to begin a novel that deals with concepts that were, before our own pandemic, relatively foreign to many of us. The coincidental tie-ins to COVID-19 weren't enough to keep me interested in this novel, which moved at a rapid place without giving me time to absorb concepts or make connections with characters. This novel is action-packed and dialogue-focused, which will appeal to readers who enjoy those characteristics, but as for me, this was just not my book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Charlesbridge Teen for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Here's all I need to say about this book-

Aberdeen flu: *highly contagious, kills 95% of the people it infects*
Selfish idiot: *break quarantine and spread flu to the rest of the country/world because they don't think they should be held in quarantine to protect all other humans on the planets from the same fate*
Foreign countries: *deny "refugee" ships entrance*
Foreign countries: *still get infect by flu because people are like rats and always find a way in*
Foreign countries: *flu breaks out*
Selfish idiots: *surprised Pikachu face*

Shay: *got Aberdeen flu but is of the 5% who survived*
Shay: *breaks quarantine because she wants revenge*
Everywhere she's visited: *flu outbreak*
Shay *surprised Pikachu face*

Pretty much this whole book is about people being idiots and break quarantines that have been imposed FOR A VERY GOOD REASON, which I'm sure in the following books will lead to the apocalypse via the death of 95% of the population. I just cannot make myself feel bad for any of these characters. Not sorry. I do however feel bad for all the unnamed characters that they killed because they were fucking stupid.
Good premise, though, just very unsympathetic characters that made me want to gauge my eyes out because they were so selfish/stupid.
The end.

P.S.
Maybe this book is incredibly relevant now because of the coronavirus outbreak (which is far less contagious and even less so fatal than the Aberdeen flu BUT)... and this sentiment stands: if you've been in an area where the virus has been reported and you have possibly been infected, you are not entitled to break quarantine "because you want to go home". You do not get to walk around and potentially spread the virus because you are the citizen of a certain country. Like, I get it, I'd want to go home too... but not at the risk of other people's well-being. Don't be selfish.

This book sounded really good when I requested. Unfortunately, when I started reading it... the format was hard to get into (I know this is an unfortunate effect of advanced copies) and made it difficult to read. The story didn’t make any sense for the first 20% or so and I simply couldn’t get into it.

Don’t we all just enjoy a killer epidemic once in a while? I have been on a kick of dystopian books lately and I can’t say that I am upset about it. After fantasy, dystopian’s are one of my absolute favorites. This began after reading The Giver by Lois Lowry and the dystopian genre has just gotten better ever since. Contagion brings that typical story of something epidemic-like to the world and I love it. I love seeing the world drown into chaos that leaves little pockets of humanity left because I LOVE seeing how groups of people live after the fact. One of my favorite TV shows was Jericho (post-apocolyptic/not epidemic) but still LOVE the survival aspect.

The characters in Contagion are not the best written characters and they actually all fall on the wayside with how excellent the plot/setting of the book are written. I enjoy that they are from Scotland and this takes place there, but I wish the characters had a little bit more depth. Callie has an interesting POV that I enjoy reading but at the same time I feel like she is the annoying little sister that everyone wants to knock over. Shay and Kas have a more interesting characterization and I feel like if the book had somehow just been about them it would have been much, much better.

I absolutely loved the little cliffhanger twist at the end that made me so upset I had finished! Hopefully I can read more from Terry in the future and I hope my students do too.

Out the gate, first and foremost, I loved the short chapters. This book was a wild and engaging read and totally unpredictable. Shay remembers seeing Callie who has gone missing and she contacts her brother Kai with this information. It turns out that there is disease which is being called the Aberdeen Flu that is sweeping parts of the UK and Scotland. The book takes us through trying to figure out the source of the disease and what happened to Callie. It did leave off with a cliffhanger and I cannot wait to read the next book in the series.

This was my first book by this author, It was pretty enjoyable. I would give this book a 3.5 star rating! It was a pretty Quick and easy read!

I really enjoyed this book and honestly it took me longer to finish than it should have because life interfered. It isn’t often that you read something about a pandemic and want to read more. I honestly think this book can be used to draw parallels to outbreaks of disease that we are seeing today such as measles. The story moves & you do not realize how so many people in the world are connected until you look back on the story and what happened over its course. I highly recommend for fans of sci-fi & adventure.
I read a galley of this book through NetGalley in exchange for this review.

This book is fairly fast paced but can be a bit slow at points. I love books with mysterious illnesses gone wrong, like Maze Runner. So this one was a definite win for me. The main characters were enjoyable as well. The storyline was unique. Highly recommend!

I am a complete sucker for dytopian thrillers, especially if they are based on a medical situation such as a pandemic or similar premise. This book was an okay read for me but I don't know if it was due to it being YA or because of something else, but I had trouble relating to these characters the way that I would like to for a plot like this, Maybe this was more a building block into the trilogy as a whole and may have been best served together.

#Cotagion #NetGalley #Charlesbridge #CharlesbridgeTeen

A ghost, a girl with supernatural powers and a hot guy battle their way through an epidemic. Of course they did not start out that way (except the hot guy). Callie is our young ghost. She was part of an experiment in a facility on Shetland Island. She was cured of the plague but didn't survive the cure by fire they treated her with. After the facility is overrun by the deadly contagion she escapes to the mainland of Scotland. There she tries to find her family.

Shay lives with her mother in Scotland. After running from a bully, she sees a poster about missing Callie and realizes she saw her the day she went missing. She contacts Callie's family and brother Kai comes to see her. Kai and Callie try to figure out what happened to Callie even though they really have no leads. Then a plague starts sweeping through Scotland and England. Kai turns out to be immune but Shay gets the plague and survives. Now she has powers she can't understand. She can influence people and see auras around everything. She can connect with animals around her. Her powers continue to grow and now she can see ghost Callie. It is only survivors or those about to die who can see and communicate with Callie. Now the three of them are trying to figure out what is going on and to outrun those who are trying to capture them.

I could not put this book down. I was riveted from the first moments of Callie's story. I loved how Kai and Shay became part of that story and how we learned more and more about the plague and its deadly consequences. The shadowy government agents in the background trying to cover things up just added to the thrills and chills. I was thrilled that I had access to the second book in the series already!

‏I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.

In Teri Terry's Contagion, Kai's sister, Callie, is missing. She disappeared a year ago and Kai is beginning to lose hope Callie will ever be found. That is until he receives a call from Shay, who is most likely the last person to see Callie before she disappeared.

With the help of Shay, Kai seeks the truth about Callie's disappearance. Their search takes them through areas affected by a painful and contagious epidemic, an epidemic that mimics the flu, and which almost no one survives.

While the description presents a typical lost child/search storyline, the book is more than that. Notice the epidemic? It is more than a common epidemic.

The chapters are short and are time-stamped which ensures the reader knows the timeline events occurred. The story is presented from Callie and Shay's perspectives. Some reviewers on Goodreads commented they were confused in the beginning but, after reading a few chapters, everything made sense.

Contagion is the first book in Teri Terry's Dark Matter trilogy. The complete trilogy was released in the UK and the 1st book has been finally released in the USA! Deception (book 2) and Evolution (book 3) are available for purchase from the UK.

This 200-word review was published on Philomathinphila.com on 8/11/19.

This was a page turner for sure. The chapters were short, which was also nice. I always like to stop reading at the end of a chapter, so this book made it easy to do that. I loved the medical aspects of the novel. The virus, how it started, how it spread, looking for a cure. As a nurse, I love a book with a good medical backdrop. There was also some suspense! Part 4 had my heart beating out of my chest!

The beginning was hard to get into. Around part 2 it really picked up for me and had me reading quickly. This almost felt like two different novels meshed together – one where the focus was finding the lost girl and one with a killer flu like virus. It all ends up coming together, but the start didn’t mesh well for me. Some of the conversation didn’t flow very naturally. There was also a part about family lineage that I felt like was thrown in only for shock value? Maybe in the second or third book it will be explained. While I liked the medical aspects of the book, at times it was a little too science-y. She started talking about matter, anti-matter, particle accelerators and I was just as lost as could be. I do realize some people could feel this way about the medical aspect though.

All in all, it was a pretty solid read. Not a full four stars because I think it got too science-y and the start was hard to get into.

I would recommend Contagion! I actually included it in this month’s Book Battle recs for multi-pov! It was a good story with a solid start. I can’t wait to read the next books in the series!

Thank you to Netgalley and Charlesbridge Teen for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

“Contagion” is the first in a trilogy, a young adult novel which should appeal to a wide age range. The plot is interestingly involving, and the characters empathetic and easy to care about; and it’s written in a way that makes it suitable for relatively young readers as well as older young people.

Shay is 17, living in a part of Scotland that’s rather off the beaten path. One day she sees a flyer regarding a missing girl, and is startled to realise that she saw the girl on the day she disappeared. The police are not confident her sighting will help since it’s over a year ago, but the missing girl’s older brother, Kai is much more enthusiastic, and Shay soon finds herself drawn into his search.

The search is quickly complicated by the outbreak of what’s known as the Aberdeen Flu, a new illness that is virulently contagious and kills almost everyone who catches it. Before long Shay and Kai are dodging the flu, the army and the police, and they’re now trying to help find the origin of the illness as well as Kai’s sister.
There are some elements of this plot which are likely to be blindingly obvious to more experienced readers but the novel is interesting and engaging enough that most won’t care. Shay is slower on the uptake, but given her youth and the fact she’s right in the middle of events, that’s hardly surprising. Her slower realisations are believable.

Shay and Kai are realistic characters, and their growing relationship is also believable. In fact, all the characters, however briefly they appear, are realistic and believable. Shay’s friendships, enmities, relationship with her mother, and romance, will all be recognisable to young readers.

Teri has a light, easy style which is deceptively simple; it makes events credible and draws the reader into the characters’ dilemmas. This is not the first of Teri’s books that I’ve read, and they all share a strong understanding of how teenagers feel, and an accurate ear for the rhythms of their speech.

This is a young adult novel that will appeal most to its’ intended audience; in making it accessible to a wide range of young people Teri has perhaps made the novel a little too understated to strongly appeal to many adult readers. Nevertheless, I found the novel highly readable, and would be happy to hand it to any young person (say, anyone over about 12), confident that most will enjoy it.

Contagion by Teri Terry is the first book in her Dark Matter trilogy. The trilogy is billed as young adult, but don’t let age stop you. It’s an interesting read for all adults, young or otherwise.

Callie has been abducted and subjected to horrific scientific experiments. She’s escaped, but things are going from bad to worse.

Kai and his family have been looking for his younger sister, Callie, who’s been missing for a year. He’s recently been contacted by Shay, who is the last person to have seen his sister alive. The teenagers form a bond and are actively searching for Callie, even though the country has been overtaken by a deadly epidemic. Is this how the world ends?

Contagion is very well written. The story is told through the alternating viewpoints of Callie and Shay, which the author handles nicely with appropriate chapter headers. Scotland is an excellent choice of location and is strongly featured throughout the story. The characters are fully fleshed and the dialogue is strong. The plot and it’s twists completely grab and hold the reader’s attention. The ending satisfies but also sets the stage for the second installment of the trilogy, which I will definitely be reading. This novel has earned a 4 out of 5 star rating. I recommend it to young adult readers and anyone who likes a well-written mystery/thriller.

My thanks to Charlesbridge and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. However, the opinions expressed in this review are 100% mine and mine alone.

A fantastic book perfect for fans of the Darkest Minds trilogy by Alexandra Bracken. I particularly like that the characters that we read from the perspectives of are initially unaware of what is happening and you find out with them throughout the book. This book was fast-paced, unpredictable and kept me on the edge of my seat and I can't wait to read the rest of the series.

Thank you to Charlesbridge Teen and to NetGalley for providing an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.