I received [b: A Cure for Madness|26209461|A Cure for Madness|Jodi McIsaac|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1443468245s/26209461.jpg|46189005] by [a: Jodi McIsaac|5826477|Jodi McIsaac|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1431014820p2/5826477.jpg] from NetGalley. In exchange for the Kindle e-book, here is my honest review:

The minute I started to read, stopping was like trying to fight the power of a straight-line wind. I was powerless to resist.

At first, I called it a Pre-Dystopian-ish-Possible-Y/A book. The elements sit nearby in a petri dish of possibility. A unique work emerges.

[b: A Cure for Madness|26209461|A Cure for Madness|Jodi McIsaac|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1443468245s/26209461.jpg|46189005], addresses topics that affect us today. The use of fiction, imagination, make the truth easier to take.

The writing is good, and whew, talk about suspense.

"A Cure..." seems like a few of my favorite authors got together and had a writing party. They wanted to see who could raise the reader's pulse rate the highest.

The characters are well developed. My feelings about each one evolved throughout the novel.

Content: I would recommend this to a Mature Y/A reader and above.
Sex: There is one sex scene that is a little graphic, and references to rape. 18
Language: There is great cussing, plenty of f-bombs.
Violence: Yes. - But it is done in the framework of a story that is believable.

I look forward to reading more work by [a: Jodi McIsaac|5826477|Jodi McIsaac|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1431014820p2/5826477.jpg] ( )

A Cure For Madness' is a hard to label book because it refuses to follow along the well-worn path of thrillers about pandemics. There is a pandemic and a very scary one at that: extremely contagious, incurable and vaccine-proof, it destroys the minds of the infected but doesn't kill them. There are also threatening government authority figures who appear to have something to hide and who are ruthless in the pursuit of the mentally ill brother of our heroine, Clare Campbell. Yet the primary focus isn't on the end of the world as we know it or even on the salient efforts of scientists to save everyone, it's on the moral dilemma faced by Clare Campbell, who is presented with a choice of protecting her brother or saving the world.

What I liked most about the book was that it didn't try to make things easy for Clare or for the reader. The bad guys were trying to do the right thing. The good guys were unstable, anti-social and sometimes violent. None of the choices was good. No magic bullets were available.

In addition to the usual challenges of trying to decide whether the greatest good of the greatest number over-rides personal and familial loyalty, 'A Cure For Madness' added in significant personal challenges for Clare. Her older brother, Wes, the man she has to decide whether to save, suffers from schizophrenia. Jodi McIsaac takes an unflinching look at what that means: the delusions, the paranoia, the sudden violence and then the reversion to 'normal' and all the associated apologies. I like that Wes comes across as a person and not just as the disease that sometimes drives his actions. Given that a form of schizophrenia now seems to have become highly contagious, seeing Wes as a person provides a context for what is happening to everyone else.

Claire isn't one of those kick-ass heroines with experience of working in war zones and a handy PhD in epidemiology. She's a woman who, as a teen, suffered a severe trauma in her home town and left it determined never to come back. She's intelligent and well-travelled but she's spent more than a decade running away from her hometown and her mentally ill big brother. This background means is bright enough to work out what's going on, attached enough / guilty enough about her big brother to feel both obligated and resentful at being obligated and her experience has taught her that running away doesn't banish the problem you ran from.

I loved the rigorous way challenges in this book were set up and I was impressed and surprised by the solution that Claire finally arrived at.

There were some things in the book that didn't work so well for me. I thought the pace was a little uneven. The romance/sex scene seemed not to fit easily into the flow of the story or the development of the characters.

But I found most of the book very engaging albeit in quite a grim way.

I can see that some people might find the ending, especially the last chapter, a little difficult. Personally, i liked it It needs to be read with care. Like the rest of the book, it's told from Clare's point of view but, in this chapter at least, Clare is not necessarily a reliable narrator.
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I'll start by saying that I love books that don't shy away from mental illness so A Cure for Madness was no exception.
Once I began reading it was hard to stop. It was so easy to get sucked into the story. I enjoyed discovering the origins of the mysterious Gaspereau and the comparisons to schizophrenia was a nice touch. I was also (obviously) quite impatient to find out why the CDC wanted Clare's brother Wes so bad.
The ending was bittersweet and while I'm not quite sure how I feel about it, I do like how it turned out.

*ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It was well written, engaging and hard to put down. However, Clare’s decisions and state of mind lacked consistency. She really acted like someone with multiple personalities. I also have to wonder what happened to Uncle Rob. He was a main character, and then suddenly disappeared. I also think the author grew bored with the book and decided not to give us an ending. Although the problem was resolved, there was little information on how everything was resolved, very frustrating. I’m not sure how to rank this book, so I’ll put it in the middle, 3 out of 5 stars. ( )

Claire Campbell is making a life for herself on the West Coast, as far removed from her family in Maine as possible. She maintains phone contact with her parents and brother, but hardly ever goes back to Maine to visit. Claire’s life will never be the same after receiving a phone call telling her that her parents have been murdered and she's now the legal guardian for her older brother in A Cure for Madness by Jodi McIsaac.

Claire left Maine shortly after her graduation from college. The exact reasons for her departure aren't clear, but she's kept herself apart from her family for years, maintaining contact via phone calls only. With the murder of her parents, she has no choice but to return to Maine and straighten out her brother's care, as well as make arrangements for her parent's bodies. All Claire knows about her parents' murder is that the act was committed by a fellow church member before the murderer killed himself. Little does she know, but that one reportedly random act of violence is the beginning of a health care crisis for the town of Clarkeston, Maine. When the CDC, USAMRID, and the National Guard arrive, the town becomes quarantined and it appears that Claire's brother may hold the key to a cure. Claire is forced to choose between her brother's health and welfare and that of her hometown and possibly the society as a whole.

I found A Cure for Madness to be a fast-paced, engaging, and enjoyable read. Ms. McIsaac has crafted a nightmare scenario that sounds slightly absurd but isn't too farfetched to be unbelievable. Added into the mix of a bizarre healthcare crisis, a family with conservative Christian values, mental health issues, public safety versus personal freedoms, government surveillance, man-made diseases, conspiracies, and more. Claire has to deal with the notion that Wes has been in-and-out of mental institutions for most of his adult life, but he is her beloved older brother and his decline began with an incident involving Wes avenging her virtue (I know it sounds old-fashioned, but trust me and read the book to find out more). A Cure for Madness provides a lot of thrills and chills, as well as a touch of romance. I wish I could tell you more about this amazing story, but you'll just have to read it for yourself. Seriously, you need to add A Cure for Madness to your TBR list and set aside a weekend to read this book. I'm looking forward to reading more from Ms. McIsaac in the future. ( )