MORAL HAZARDS

A friendship unravels with devastating consequences in a thoughtprovoking drama that takes on both sides of the vaccination debate.

- CATRIONA FERGUSON

THE HERD, by Emily Edwards (Bantam, $37) With memories of the occupation of Parliament’s grounds, which was driven by anti-vax sentiment, still fresh in our minds, no one needs reminding that vaccination remains a hot topic. But well before Covid turned the noise up to 11, the vaccination of children was already a matter of sometimes heated debate between parents the world over.

In The Herd, debut novelist Emily Edwards jumps into the fray and gives it the Jodi Picoult treatment: take a highly topical moral dilemma, drop it into a domestic setting, then observe closely as it makes or breaks the existing order of relationships between family and friends.