The Fervor by Alma Katsu

 

This is a weird little quasi-horror novel. It kinda looks as though there's something supernatural going on, but it turns out to be ... mostly not, apparently. There's all sort of barely-subtext going on about racism and anger and hatred and mobism, because it was written in 2022 and I guess it looked, then, as though there might be some hope a novel could do something about the way society was headed; that barely-subtext does tend to take on a grinding-axe timbre, eventually. The story's pretty decent, though, multi-POV, with some characters being more deeply flawed than others. Having excerpts from a journal a character kept in the main timeline's past as text, rather than as like revelations in the main timeline, is probably the most-graceful way to handle it, especially since the journal and someone who can read it aren't in the same place until late in the novel, so there aren't any sudden stupid reveals.