Parasite by Mira Grant

Book 1 in the Parasitology series.
Sally Mitchell was in a car crash, suffered brain damage, but just as her family were about to agree to switching off the life-support she woke up. That was six years ago. Now Sally is Sal and she no longer remembers anything about her life before the accident. She has had to learn everything all over again, from talking to reading, to who her family, to manners and everything in between.
And that’s before we get to “the implant”.
I really enjoyed this book. If you liked Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy then you should pick this one up. I thought it was even better than Feed, although in many ways it is very different it has a similar feel to it. Feed was about the aftermaths of a zombie near-apocolyse. This is about the origins of a zombie-like rising. Set in the near future and about more than just the story.
The problem is I was so enjoying the read that I paid no attention to my progress and suddenly I was at 96% and then done! And Sal’s story has only just begun. I can’t really complain about that though, I knew it was the first book in a series when I started reading it.
Sal is what makes this story really come alive. She’s our first person narrator so if she wasn’t convincing the whole book would have fallen apart.  Luckily for the reader Sal was, to me, a great character. She’s naive and innocent on account of the whole, being on six years old, yet she is a grown adult struggling with that fact, and with her parents who don’t really know how to deal with her missing past either.
I haven’t even started with the whole parasite of the title yet, have I? And I’m not going to, apart from to say that it is an interesting take on the zombie genre. If it really is an addition to that genre, I”m not entirely sure yet.
I’m not quite sold on the character of Tansy though, if you’ve read the book I think you’ll know what I mean, unless you love her that is? What I am totally sold on is the picture book that is constantly referenced in the book. Can someone please actually write and illustrate it and then get it published. It sounds wonderfully creepy.