I found the pacing a bit off, some chapters jumping months ahead of the previous. The story had a great start and was very graphic and gruesome in its post apocalyptic descriptions, but as the book progressed, the characters were all so two dimensional. Emma in particular was so quickly manipulated it was hard to believe how quickly that happened. There was a surprising lack of depth to a story discussing nurture vs nature, and ultimately a very hopeless ending. That may have been the author's intent, and this was a very well written story (pacing issues aside), I just felt there was room to explore the grey, rather than focus on the black and white.