The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller

A strange pandemic is gripping London (sound familiar?) and Neffy has signed up for a clinical trial of a new drug to combat it. She awakens after a bad reaction only to discover that the world they knew is gone and the staff have abandoned them. One of the few people left has a prototype for a memory device that allows the user to "revisit" favorite memories. For Neffy this is a blessing and a curse and soon with no future to look to she becomes addicted to the machine and the past. Through these memories she goes through her childhood and her fraught career as a marine biologist and in her spare time she writes letters to one of her subjects, an octopus. This is an interesting look at when the lab worker becomes the lab specimen as if to make amends and "a fly caught under the glass" look at how people react to a crisis. Neffy could not reconcile the treatment of these marine animals that felt cruel and the respect she had for the octopus and upended her career. I loved the back story of the world of the octopus which was full of fascinating facts.  4 stars