Second book I've read by this author - the bizarro elements hit differently in 2020, but still a great story teller.

I am conflicted with The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson. At times I enjoyed it and thought that by the end, this will be a 4 star book. Other times, I cringed a bit and wondered if this would end up being a 3 star book. It’s times like these that I wish I the rating system had half star increments, but the simplicity of only having 5 stars works very well in my opinion so no need to change it for the few times a year that I must decide between stars. 

Ultimately, the parts I didn’t like bothered me enough to outweigh the parts that I did like which is unfortunate because I feel this book and it’s chilling story had the potential to be a great read. I enjoyed it overall, a solid read. What was bothersome for me was how dumbed-down the characters felt at times, particularly at the beginning. It felt like these characters were stereotypical 80’s horror movie teens who only care about drinking, drugs and sex. Maybe there is a target audience that will think these characters feel "real" because of this, however I’m not one of them so to me they just felt a little flat. I found it difficult for me to want to cheer for their survival. Other times, like the podcast chapters and the parts of the second half of the book that explain the cause of the horror, were well thought out, intelligent and illustrated the events very well. The clichéd teen feel eventually wore down once the horrors of the story came out but they would make an appearance once in the later chapters. For the record, this would be a solid 3.5 stars.

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the kind of edgy, fun read that I just love.

It’s violent, disturbing, and it goes a mile a minute.  You won’t want to come up for air.

I liked our characters and simply loved the plot of this one.  It’s one of those books where you simply aren’t sure where it’s going…but you’re happy to be along for the ride.

Not for people who like things soft and easy, but if you like a thriller with an edge, this is your book.

A blast of a read!

*ARC Provided via Net Galley

This was a very interesting book about a small whose teenagers become very violent and a few teenagers who have to survive. There is two different points of view and most of the book a radio DJ and a teenage girl.I found the radio DJ a little bit flat but I very much enjoy the teenage girl's point of view and her struggling with PTSD.as someone who struggles with PTSD myself I I can completely understand the flashbacks and the fight or flight instinct.

I enjoyed this book about a small town and how everything can change when you least expect it. The change happens first in a high school class known for bullying anyone that is different like the main character and her best friend. In a fit of rage, a boy brains his teacher with a textbook before being shot by police. From there, violence escalates across town. I thought that this story was very well written and I liked that ultimately, this all started because some human scientists did some experiments they shouldn't have and ended up making a big mess. The main cause about the epidemic wasn't zombies or vampires or werewolves, but humans.

What a crazy ride.  Not going to lie, the book was slow to start and the end seemed rushed and chaotic.  But the middle of the book was engrossing with great character development.  Will definitely give this author another try in the future.  Thank you to NetGalley!

#Netgalley #TheLoop

Character driven, riveting apocalyptic YA sci-fi, fantasy with Stranger Things meets World War Z, Inbetweeners and Freaks and Geeks vibes! I’m sold! 

Yes, amazing combination is served well with popcorn and gin-fizz! Of course I jumped in without having second thoughts! 

But I have to warn you my friends! This book is not everyone’s cup of Early Grey: It’s gory, bloody, wild, dark and extremely violent journey! If you have delicate stomach, a hater of teen slasher movies or expecting something less disturbing, this is not a great pair for you! It can give you nightmares and make you paranoid ( I checked the doors at least seven times and saw shadows following me at the house. When my husband saw me on the floor after I fast jumped from my seat, I acted like I was doing my push ups! My arms still hurt like hell) 

So I gave you my warning. It’s up to you whether you choose to read or not! 

The nightmarish story starts at a small touristic town named Turner Falls located in the hills of Western Oregon: an ideal place for your weekend holiday escapades. But this place is also home of IMTECH: a science and biotech corporation. IMTECH’s brand new exploration is a special kind of parasite which has been taken from another specie’s tissue. They just implanted those parasites to teenagers to their great mind control plan which unfortunately gets out of control. Those teenagers start to turn into crazy killing machines, full with fury and vengeance. They seem like younger extras of Walking Dead series walking down the streets bloodthirsty, looking for their new victims.

Meanwhile Lucy and Bucket are the juniors and also outcasts of the high school, who are keeping their heads low, acting like ghosts not to be bullied more but a fight breaks out near the end of high school days and everything gets under control! Lucy decides to fight back and gathers her new friends to help her for this fight or die mission! 

It’s action packed, disturbing, stimulating, blood freezing, intense, complex reading, criticizing sensitive issues including racism, bullying. 

First half of the book is a little bumpy and slow paced. You have to push yourself harder not to dnf@%20 but after 80 pages later, juicy parts ( a lot of pouring blood!) start. Lucy is extremely likable, badass character you may easily root for. 

If you ignore the slowness and long introduction of first 100 pages and if your endurance to gory things level is high enough, this is surprisingly twisty, moving, dazzling and also horrifying story. 

I cut some star points because of my bumpy start and some of less likable and forgettable characters but I’m still rounding up 3.5 stars to 4! I mostly enjoyed my reading experience and highly recommend it to the genre less and not so delicate readers with highly functioning stomaches. 

Special thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books/ Saga Press for sharing this ARC with me in exchange my honest opinions.

This book started off great, but got messy pretty quickly.  I got lost quite a few times.  Other than that, it was pretty good.  I love the premise.

A wild ride!  Evil corporations, conspiracy, mind control, experiments gone wrong, this book has it all!   Eerily parallels a whole lot of what’s going on in the world today which only added to the already enthralling adventure.  
Features a strong female lead that works against her troubled past and develops new friendships, all while fighting for her life.  Great character development.  Atmospheric and graphic.  This would make an awesome movie, I could not put it down!

The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson is a standalone coming of age horror thriller with a science fiction aspect to it. Turner Falls, Oregon is a small tourist town that has recently seen an influx of biotech and related firms locating to it. Lucy and her friend nicknamed Bucket are juniors at the local high school and are the only minorities in the school. When a fight breaks out in class near the end of the school year, it is only the beginning of what is to come.

Lucy was a character that took a while to get to know, but was definitely someone you could root for. She had a distinct voice and her motivations seemed believable. The secondary characters were less three-dimensional except for Bucket and Brewer. However, they enhanced the story and the relationships seemed believable. The writing in the first third of the book did not flow well for me. However, it picked up as the action and stakes increased. Themes include family, trauma, racism, bullying, biotech research and development, violence, friendships, and much more.

Overall, this was an interesting and compelling read that had high stakes and some unusual plot twists. However, there are many instances of extreme violence and gore in this book as well as some language and I would not call this a fun read.  If you are a fan of horror novels, then you may want to check this one out.

Many thanks to Gallery Books – Saga Press and Jeremy Robert Johnson for a complimentary digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley and the opportunity to provide an honest review. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way.

Well that was a hell of a ride. 
This book was the fastest page turner I've had this year. I just could not consume it fast enough. 
It reminded me a lot of a movie I loved as a kid 'the faculty' but much much more involved and heartracing. 
This book is everything needed right before Fall/Halloween,  the characters were so well done you feel all their emotions and gut wrenching anxiety throughout the story. 
I will definitely be recommending this book and searching for more from this author. 
4.5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

DNF. 

The beginning feels painfully slow, despite the story elements happening in the right places, which is probably due to characterization. The main characters don't read like real teenagers, or even real people. I found them so distractingly bad that I just kept waiting for something plot relevant to happen so they’d shut up and get on with it already. And when things did happen, I still didn’t care. 

The blurb seems misleading. The comps are both multiple POV, and the blurb calls Lucy a “young woman.” I was not expecting this story to be told solely from the POV of a teenage girl. I quit around the halfway point, but Disturbing Behavior seems like a better comparison than World War Z.

I read this in a blaze--not because it was bad, but because it is a fantastic ride of a horror story of the creature variety, with fights and twists and poignant moments and some very true high school student behaviors and a Final Girl to blow away all other Final Girls. In a small town in Oregon, the local med-tech company starts experimenting on high school students, and as you'd expect, things do not go well. Altered students rampage, killing and infecting the town, while adults fall into induced comas, only to be murdered by said students. Lucia, who has been a survivor all her life, leads a handful of friends though a harrowing pursuit as they seek shelter and safety. It's a terrific race against attackers and time to the very last page. If you like horror, creatures, conspiracies, big business gone bad, people getting their comeuppances, and Strong Female Protagonists, you're going to love this.

Thank you NetGalley and Gallery/Saga Press for this ARC.

Wow wow wow, this book is incredible!! It is for sure a favorite read of 2020. The characters are amazing and so authentic. I felt transported back to high school with the bullies, the “loadies”, and the awkward kids. There were some things about Lucy, the main character, that I could relate to. Then there’s the conspiracy aspect, and a corporation testing a biotech device in a small rural town. Obviously nothing is going to go wrong, right? We all know the answer to that. This book was sooo gory! So if you don’t like gore, be warned. I personally felt like the ending also tied everything up nicely. This book gets all the stars!

What if you gave in to every desire? What if everything you did was to make you feel good? The Loop is a #thriller, #scifi, #horror masterpiece. You hear a lot in the news lately about addressing #mentalhealth. It's not something you can see from the outside and some don't want to talk about it. Chemical imbalances in the brain create all sorts of chaos. Don't get me wrong, sometimes a little crazy is a good thing. Using that term to refer to myself of course. What if there was a procedure that could keep everything balanced for you? This story is about that possibility and all the things that could go wrong. Let me tell you, it gets sideways. Are you in #theloop? Maybe you eat to balance yourself. Maybe you medicate. Maybe you kill...

This was my first JRJ experience. I recently discovered him, and began to order his backlist titles. Then I saw this one coming out in September. Then somehow I got a free arc from netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book was so good. It had friendship, diverse characters, suspenseful story...I didn't want to put it down! Definitely some scifi, X-Files-y stuff going on. It had me hanging on to every word. I throughly enjoyed it and I can't wait to read his other books. This is my first venture in this bizarro horror type novel.

UMMM. This was absolutely WILD. I expected something out of the ordinary and on the periphery of my preferred genres but this was a punch to the senses! 

It begins with Lucy and her pal Bucket, who have banded together as sort of outcast minorities in their dinky Oregon town. Life in a small town sucks, yada-yada, and then one of their classmates gets his eye gouged out by another kid in the middle of class and their teacher ends up in a rather bad way when he tries to intervene. Is it bad meth or something else? 

Spoiler: it’s definitely something else. There’s a new company in town called IMTECH and they’ve done something to a bunch of  kids that makes them turn into murderous hive-mind monsters. It was pretty awesome and then it just kept getting weirder and I got less invested. It got to the point where I found it to be absurd and just kept reading because it made me laugh in a disturbed sort of way.

The characters were actually pretty great. Lucy and Bucket were wonderful and there was another semi-main character called Brewer who was actually pretty great and played a bit of a love interest role. The dialogue between them was great and there were surprisingly heartfelt moments amidst the horror.

Overall, this was an interesting read that certainly grabbed me and didn’t let go. I read it in just a couple sittings because I just had to know what happened next! Like I said, it was almost an absurdist horror that gave me so many WTF this is stupid/laughable moments but I still just kept reading!

This is a story about horror & unethical science

I liked elements of this book- the gore & horror aspects were outstanding, and truly frightening at points... but the protagonist felt like a teenage girl written by a male author & I never got to the point where I could sink into her perspective.

I would be curious to read more by the author!  3.5 rounded by 4.

Thanks Netgalley & Gallery Books for the e-arc!

This was a fun read with a lot going for it! It’s been described as World War Z meets Stranger Things and I can totally agree with that! The main characters are high school misfits that add in the darkly humorous banter that we all love. And the apocalyptic plot was very plausible and well explained!

I must admit though, this is the second time ever that I have said this: I do think this would make a better movie than a book simply because it is non-stop action. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good book, because it is! I just pictured everything rolling out as movie scenes and if it does make it to the big screen I would definitely watch it!

If you want something fun and different, action packed and apocalyptic, then try The Loop! It won’t let you down.

Sometimes I will read a book only because the tagline sounds interesting without knowing anything else about the book. I'm thinking after enough fails where the tagline doesn't come close to the actual book I need to change my tactics. The only thing this book has in common with Stranger Things is they both have teenagers and a tech company, and for the WWZ (it's the movie not the book) the only thing in common is a Zombie like antagonist. This one mostly falls flat for me, it's not good but it's not also bad, I'm predicting I'll forget most of this after a few short weeks. I ended skimming more through this than I wanted to, the book seemed to exchange gore and horror for the reasons of why and how people were being possessed by a weird tech. The writing is good and the plot idea is decent, there's a good chance I didn't fall into this one fully is because I just read a book that I ended up loving. People who want a short, quick, easy read, this is for you. On to the next.

Once upon a time in the town of Turner Falls, there lived the adopted daughter of Bill and Carol Henderson, Lucy. She was originally from Peru, and if it wasn't for her best friend, Bucket, she would be the only person with brown skin at her high school. The evil and rich princes and princesses loved to humiliate Lucy and Bucket, and they were very sad most of the time. They were living for the day that they could escape this evil kingdom, and find a place where they would be valued for who and what they are, not judged by their looks alone.
One night, Lucy and Bucket go with their friend Brewer to a party where all of the rich kids have gathered. They will journey deep into the caves under Turner Falls, and come face to face with evil. A virus, or contagion, or perhaps an evil spell soon overtakes the princesses and princes, and nothing will stand in the way of their murderous intentions.
It is up to the brave and heroic Lucy, along with Brewer and Bucket to save the good people of Turner Falls and make the villains pay. But there is more at work here than a greedy biotech firm with an untested invention. Evil has been released and all it plans to do is play its game, its way.
Our heroine Lucy is just a damaged kid when all of this begins, but she will find her inner warrior before all this ends. She will fight to do what is right for the good people of Turner Falls, and woe to those who stand in her way. And they all lived happily ever after, or not because that would be telling.
There were so many things to love about The Loop. The Nightwatchman podcast, where an outsider has many questions about all of the corporations suddenly locating in Turner Falls, especially IMTECH. What can I say about Lucy? She didn't deserve what happened to her, but if you think life is fair, Yeah Right( this will make sense when you read the book, I swear)! She was a great character who grew by leaps and bounds, and like Robin Hood, she would take down the rich kids to try to save the poor. Her band of Merry Men, Bucket, and Brewer, with a little help along the way, were loyal and true. A crazy ride with only one part that slowed the frenetic pacing down for me.The first book I have read by this author, and not my last.