Warnings
Repeated references to Nazis and the Holocaust.

Plot
The book is set after a global pandemic. It follows the story of Rags the journalist and her partner moving out of the big city to a small town, where she's taken over as the sole editor of the local newspaper. A local teenager goes missing and Rags decides to pursue the mystery and find out what's happened. 

Story
The story sold in the overview is focused on a missing teenager, but the book seems to focus more heavily on post-pandemic safety measures, and how the main character takes offence to these regulations. I found there to be too many tangents for the main ‘missing teen’ storyline to be compelling. 

It takes 40% of the book before the main character decides that they care about the missing girl. In the first half they actively state how little they care and that it isn't their problem.

There's a lot of world building and description that doesn't really add to the story, to the point that I found it very difficult to persevere through to the end. I also never warmed to any of the characters, and they almost all start on the defensive with one another, so I didn't really warm to any of the relationships either.

Critiques
There are some very odd turns of phrase, for example, ‘hates clutter like a healthy person hates cancer’. 
The author draws false equivalences, comparing the police and government to Nazis throughout, and comparing a pandemic to the Holocaust on multiple occasions.

Face masks and social distancing are reintroduced later in the book – “lined up like a marching band, a band of soldiers, a band of prisoners about to march to their deaths.” I realise this book is sold as fiction, but given the ongoing global pandemic, and struggles with misinformation regarding safety measures, I think this is an awful message.

There's one character with they/them pronouns, which I thought was great, but this slips on a couple of occasions to 'his', which was disappointing and could have been easily spotted and amended. 
"She could tell by the shoulder length light brown hair and slight build that this was a woman…" - disappointing assumption of gender. 

Overall I think this book is written in very bad taste. It reads as a story against lockdown rather than a mystery of a missing teenager. I wouldn't recommend it.

 I received this copy for free through NetGalley, and this review contains my honest opinions.