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This non-fiction book is by an author known better for his fiction and social media presence. He grew fascinated by the biggest killer disease around the world and researched how something so deadly today could have a treatment that is able to treat it successfully for the last half century. The book began when he met a young tuberculosis patient in Sierra Leone with a magnetic personality who suffered a series of challenges in his illness that each threatened to cost him his life. Along the way, the book delves into the history of researchers who worked on a cure including the big pharmaceutical firms which control the production and distribution of the drugs in the treatment. It explains the biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in simple terms for non-experts.

I listened to this as an audiobook, read by the author. He has a talent for making a subject you had some preconceptions about new and interesting, and one that you would expect to be grim and depressing into something that says something illuminating about the human condition. I hope that the book advances the conversation on what society ought to be doing to safeguard the well-being of humanity as a whole.

I adored Yumi's Cells when it was still releasing on Webtoons and I was recently reminded of it, so I wanted to give it another read through because why not?

With reading everything in quicker succession due to the series being completed, I was able to look at it from a different angle. I still enjoyed it and loved seeing how the creator was using the cells to give reasoning behind stupid things that we do as humans for no reason. That still stands strong.

Biggest complaint is that it seeming like the author was just ready to be done.

SPOILER WARNING:

We had so much time spent on Yumi's previous relationships, and when Rudolph comes along, it all just felt super rushed, which was frustrating because you really want to see Yumi being completely content in a relationship where she is getting as much as she's giving. So it was disappointing to have the ending relationship just get steamrolled into the end when so much time was spent on the previous guys.

END SPOILERS

The rushed feeling of the ending is the only reason that I knocked it down a star. Otherwise, it's a really great slice-of-life with some drama thrown into it, and the comedic relief of the Cells behaving in their own way. Honestly, probably one of my favorite web toons so far.

Honestly I thought about DNFing this near the beginning, but Chona grew on me and I wanted to see what she was able to accomplish. Even with her being one of the main characters, you really don't get to know or see much about her. That was disappointing.

This book greatly suffers from having way too many characters introduced, just for them to disappear for the rest of the book. At first I found it interesting to see how the stories would like up and intersect, but it just got to be too much. There was no time to actual develop anything thoughts or feelings towards most of the characters because you just got a quick snippet of them.

Also, ABSOLUTELY check the trigger warnings on this. I didn't think it was one that would need it due to it being the book of the year, but boy was that a mistake.

I enjoyed the first Vera Wong book enough to want to pick this one up when it was released. I was very excited to dive into it, but ultimately just felt disappointed.

This one covers a much heavier topic than the first, and I was not prepared for that, especially with the amount of cozy woven through the whole thing. Vera also just seemed different and I wasn't as excited to see the antics she would get into. My biggest gripe, though, is that it followed the formula of the first book too closely and just felt like a rehash. Maybe my expectations were a little too high, but I also wasn't enamored with the first book, so I don't think that was the case. Either way, I'm still not upset that I put time into reading it, but I don't think I'll be interested in picking up the next if the series continues.