I really wanted to like this book. Stranger Things meets World War Z? Yes, please! I guess you could say that comparison is accurate. We follow a group of people, mostly teens, as they try to survive the night in a small town after things start going very wrong. I don’t want to give anything away, but just know going in that this is a sci-fi horror. That’s usually one of my favorite types of horror stories, but this didn’t work for me. My biggest issue was that I didn’t like the teen characters, so it made it hard to care about what happened to them.

There’s nothing wrong with this book. I just didn’t enjoy my time reading it. If you like horror and the synopsis intrigues you, I still recommend it.

THE LOOP/ Jeremy Robert Johnson
3/5

REVIEW:
An uncontrollable, biotechnology is released into the population of a small Oregon town turning the town's teens into a murderous pack. A group of outsiders must find a way to keep the weapon from spreading. Can they save the town? More importantly, can they save themselves?

THE LOOP is definitely deserving of comparisons to Stranger Things. Jeremy Robert Johnson does a superb job of coupling the chaotic, apocalyptic feelings of teenage angst with the literal chaos of an apocalypse-level event. Both heartfelt and, at times, graphic, this Sci-fi horror will have you routing for the underdogs to save us all until the very end.

It was really good, powerful and well-written with the exception of a few bits of dialogue that felt inauthentic. But wow, it was so so bleak. I read it before COVID and found it devastating. I still put it on my library's social media as a recommended scary book, but it wouldn't be my first go-to recommendation to a fan of horror.

This one took me a while to finish. Nothing is inherently wrong with it I just couldn’t particularly connect with it. It had a good start then started to drag about a third of the way into it and it was hard for me to continue. I understand the comparison of “Stranger Things meets World War Z” but unfortunately I just didn’t think the characters in this book were as likable as the cast of characters in Stranger Things. Overall it was a solid read so I give it 3 stars.

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Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the silver screen spectacles of Hollywood have been one of the hardest hit industries with current productions having been forced to shutdown, and only having just recently resumed filming after months of inactivity, while movie theaters faced prolonged closures, and in some cases permanent shutdowns due to the lack of income. For those big-chain theaters that were able to weather the pandemic and have reopened, they now face a drought of customers unwilling to put their lives, and the lives of their loved ones, at risk of a potentially deadly disease or its long-term health damage.

What does any of this have to do with The Loop? Well, as a fan of movies and TV, Jeremy Robert Johnson’s latest is the type of book that makes me think, Who needs movies?.

The Loop is a big-budget, big-screen, horror spectacle filled with chills and thrills in prose form, the kind that puts your imagination into overdrive as the prose plays out in your movie of the mind. For my money, this book is going right up there with Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield as one of 2020’s best high-end horror cinematic-experience-in-a-book releases that you’re likely to find.

A former developer of cutting edge medical breakthroughs, IMTECH has begun producing a new biological implant that promises to provide augmented reality far beyond any wearable tech currently on the market. Unfortunately, the corporation has begun testing its applications on a wealthy suburban city in Oregon, injecting its teenage test subjects to disastrous results. First, teens go missing. And then the brutal murders begin...

Johnson does not traffic in small ideas here, nor does he skimp on the gore. The Loop is chock full of body horror, techno-horror, and just plain old squirm inducing horror rife with a variety of savage maulings and mutilations. Underneath all the glorious and plentiful blood spill is a pair of great big, brass brains. Johnson balances the horrifying viciousness of an otherwise quaint and quiet small town filled with murderous, rampaging teens with a hell of a lot of scientific verisimilitude and reasonable-enough technical explanations to provide a meaty, high-concept raison d’etre.

Stuck in the middle of this are two teens, Lucy and her best-friend, Bucket. The former is a Peruvian transplant thanks to an adoption after the death of her birth parents, while Bucket and his family are Pakistani immigrants. Their brown skin makes them outcasts in white suburbia, but given the past trials and tribulations in each of their personal histories, they’re also the most capable high schoolers to weather this insane storm. Johnson writes his teen characters well, and their relationship always struck me as smooth, natural, and realistic. I really enjoyed watching Lucy come into her own over the course of this catastrophe, even as she struggles with not only what she’d done, but what she’ll have to as the violence wears on. Johnson depicts this weird, horrific coming-of-age scenario with chilling aplomb, and he really makes you feel for what Lucy and Bucket go through as the story escalates. And boy howdy, does this fucker ever escalate!

To circle back to the movies - because The Loop really is like a movie on crack in highly addictive book form - picture Michael Crichton by way of David Cronenberg, coupled with Christopher Nolan’s flair for great big action beats. I think this should give you a glimmer of what to expect from JRJ here, but only just a small glimpse, really. The Loop has a lot going on in its pages, with a very high, off the charts WOAH to WHAT THE FUCK?! ratio. I’m not sure of the last time a book has so throughly impressed me with its scientific acumen and unrelenting blood-thirst that made say WOW! as frequently as this book. To call it impressive is an understatement.

In case you couldn’t tell, yeah, I fucking loved this one. Highly, highly, highly recommended.

There’s something about Fall that always puts me in the mood to read Horror that will keep me up at night with nightmares and The Loop definitely did the job. The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson is a standalone sci-fi/horror/ thriller that revolves around small town Turner Falls, Oregon. Here we get to meet Lucy Henderson, who, like many small town teens who never fit in, long to leave this town behind her. Adopted at a young age, she, along with her best friend Bucket, are some of the very few minorities at school and have to deal with the small minded racism of the other teens and can’t wait to flip everyone off as they drive off into the sunset.

But life has a way of speeding up that desire when they witness their classmate lose it and attack their teacher. The memory of the attack haunts Lucy and trying to get her mind off it, Bucket invites Lucy to go with him and another friend, Brewer, to a party in the woods. How could any of them know that they would regret something so much?

The Loop is a combo of Stranger Things, Invasion of the Body Snatchers with some X-Files/Twilight Zone, and a touch of a good zombie movie, with a nice hit of raunchiness which reminded me of Scary Movie. Not gonna lie, the beginning is a touch slow but it builds up nicely and the tension ramps up to an 11 very quickly. The action and suspense were spot on and had me on the edge of my seat. The descriptions are captivating and I felt like I was watching a movie more than I was reading a book. I wasn’t kidding when I said I had nightmares after reading it. It’s that vivid.

This was a horror book that has everything you can want. A strong, female lead who we see grow throughout the book as she realizes how she’s been trying to hold herself apart from her adopted parents, scared of loving them, but when danger comes to their small town, immediately goes home to make sure they are ok. Lots of scare filled moments and an ending that stopped my heart. This was my first book by the author but definitely not the last.

It started with the murder-suicide of a middle-class mother and her teenage son, a highly aberrant event for Turner Falls, Oregon. Then, Lucy, who moved to the tech hub from Peru when adopted by a local couple, witnessed a classmate murder her Algebra teacher in the middle of class. When the son of a prominent biotech executive went missing, the entire town—with the exception of the conspiracy theory podcast Nightwatchman—seemed to agree to a collective amnesia rather than admit something was very wrong in the town.

However, the night of the party at East Bear Cave forced Lucy to confront the realities of the small town that was supposed to be a refuge from her tragic past: something terrible was infecting the privileged sons and daughters and making them aggressive and violent, taking delight in suffering and death. Without the help of adults, Lucy spearheads a group of other outsiders: her best friend, Bucket, ostracized because he’s from the Middle East, Danny Brewer, a loader from the wrong side of the tracks, two clerks from the record store, and Steve, a refuge from IMTECH, the biotech firm believed to be behind the outbreak.

I thought The Loop’s beginning was sluggish, but once the action picked up, it was relentless and took place in a single night. Accompanying the group’s desperate battle for survival was Lucy’s interior journey to understand her multiple identities as they manifest in the mantle of leadership.

I loved that The Loop is told from the perspective of a teenage girl, one who thought the worst was behind her when she immigrated to the United States, only to learn that the true horror waited in the quiet of an American city. I enjoyed Brewer as well. Although I wish that the action had started earlier in the narrative, once it began, I couldn’t pull myself away.

At one point in the story, Lucy is knocked out, and when she comes to, she wakes to a confusing scene in progress. I felt that jarred in terms of exactly what happened to infect the teenagers and how different factions in charge had differing agendas. It’s not completely necessary for the plot, but I would have liked that to be a little clearer. Another difficulty I had was the sheer number of characters. Usually, I don’t have problems keeping track, but there were so many students who were pretty indistinguishable, I found myself interchanging Jake for Jason and Jason for Ben—plus there is a Judah! But because the book is so plot driven, it’s fairly easy to recover and move on to the next scene. Something that did bother me that wasn’t as easy to brush off was the language used to describe women in certain contexts.

Outside of these concerns, The Loop, is an excellent, creepy, and action-packed horror thriller perfect for the Halloween season that you’ll probably want to read in a single sitting.

I went into The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson not really knowing what to expect. I’ve never watched or read World War Z, and when it comes to Stranger Things, I’ve only watched the first three episodes of the first season. Still, the synopsis sounded interesting and as it is the Halloween season, I thought I would take a chance and boyo, this was a wild ride!

The number one thing I want to talk about first before anything else, which is also the main thing that sticks in my mind long after I finished reading, is the ended. No, no spoilers only to say it was a very good and satisfying ending that made sense. Many times, it is so hard, especially with horror stories, to come up with a satisfying ending that feels earned and deserved. You either get a happy ending that is incongruent with the rest of the novel, or everything ends in the bad times despite things working out or not building toward that. Here, the ending was still not something I expected and yet, looking back, I don’t see how it could have been anything else. Just, perfection.

Now, to talk about everything else (since I know if reviewers complaining about the ending not being up to par, then I don’t really feel invested in learning anything else or pick up the book.) The story itself is really interesting and incredibly insidious. The “science experiment” mentioned in the synopsis is something I could definitely see happening in the world, especially in the times we’re in right now, which is what truly makes this even more frightening.

The characters felt real and, more importantly, like actual teenagers. They weren’t teenagers that sounded like adults, nor were they teenagers that sounded like what adults think teenagers sound like (eg Steve Buscemi’s “How do you do fellow kids?”) From a burnout, to a conspiracy theorist, to BIPOC, these characters were ones you could relate to, at least for me as a latinx person newly living in a majority white town. What these characters go through on a daily basis, the prejudices they face, the false assumptions, all of it is amplified to the point of explosion and boy, with the times as they are right now, it feels very appropriate.

With solid pacing and increasing tension, the fear and unease make The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson an excellent horror read. I think it even makes for a great allegorical novel. I think this is just a really great, solid story with good writing, great characters, and an interesting premise. Definitely pick up a copy!

Thank you Netgalley and Gallery/ Saga Press for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I admit it took me forever to get through this book. It had some moments that caught my attention, but majority of it I struggled hardcore. I don't mind gore, which this book has aplenty. But what made me struggle was the fact there was so much sexual talk in the first 30% that each time it came up it threw me out of the story because it was either vague talk about porn or talking about how a woman's nethers were. Just completely took me out of what was going on at the time.

I will say this, the book goes from 1-100 really fast in terms of things happening. The scenes were intense and the fact this takes place so fast just amazes me.

I absolutely loved the representation for PTSD in this though. Seeing Lucy go through things, and reading those passages of her trying to come down from panic attacks, it hit something hard within me as it felt so akin to my own struggles with it. So I have to say that the author did it really well and I'll praise him on that.

Sadly, the book just wasn't overall for me.

3.5 Stars

I really don’t like The Stranger Things and World War Z comparison (I never like comparisons in blurbs). It’s a good thing I didn’t re-read the blurb before reading this. I would have been expecting something different. This book reminded me more of Run by Blake Crouch. Which is better because I really liked Run!

This book is fast-paced and a fast read. Something you want to keep turning the page to see what happens next. It has grisly descriptions and a lot of violence so it’s not for the squeamish. It has a lot going on (body horror, biomed, gore, impending apocalypse, violence, action packed). If this is your thing, then this a book for you.

Just a side note, the protagonist is a high school senior but I would not tag this as YA. I would have read this when I was 12 but that doesn’t make it YA.

Why I accepted this: I actually was offered this one through a “read now” email. However, yall know that sci-fi is something that I am working on this year, so horror sci-fi?? How could I not be interested?

Pros:
A quick read for sure. This book moves at a fast pace that makes you want to know what is happening next.
Those conspiracy theory vibes. This obviously feeds into the sci-fi part of the book and this book delivers on that front.
The horror of this story. As I said, I went in for horror and oh goodness did I get it in a big way.

Cons:
The narration style. Honestly, the biggest bummer for me on this one was the narration.

Overall: The narration is not my favorite style, but an interesting horror sci-fi read for sure.

Cinematic comparisons are inevitable with a horror novel of the breadth and scope of Jeremy Robert Johnson’s The Loop, but if I had to narrow it down to two references, I’d suggest Dawn Of The Dead meets Stranger Things, for those who want an idea of what’s in store for them between the covers of this creepy cautionary tale. Our unlikely heroes are misfit teenagers who live an almost second-class lifestyle in the Oregon town of Turner Falls, an out-of-the-way enclave known mostly for its skiing and proximity to the high desert. The main engine of the town’s economy is a biotech company named IMTECH. The progeny of the executives and scientists make up the rich kids who rule over the local high school’s social scene, while Lucy Henderson and her best friend Bucket Marwani do their best to stay out of the popular jerks’ lines of sight.

Adopted from Peru as a child, Lucy has a traumatic past she’s reluctant to share with her peers, and is even now cautious about fully relaxing into the love of her new parents, the well-meaning Hendersons. But nothing she’s ever experienced can prepare her for the sight of one of her classmates suddenly attacking another with his bare hands before killing their teacher during class one day.

That isn’t the only inexplicable violent incident to recently perturb the tranquility of Turner Falls. A wealthy mother and her teenage son are found dead in an apparent murder-suicide, while one of the most popular -- and psychotic -- kids in school has gone missing. None of this seems to be Lucy or Bucket’s problem however, until a party to celebrate the end of the school year goes viciously awry. Something terrible has taken over the town of Turner Falls, and it won’t rest until everyone is made meat.

Lucy and Bucket make for compelling underdog heroes as they try to solve the mystery of what’s happening to their town while struggling to survive the terrible carnage inflicted primarily by their fellow teens. Along the way, they pick up a crew of survivors, including teens fighting their new programming, a scientist with a large stake in the proceedings, and a gonzo journalist who seems to be one of the few civilians paying attention to Turner Falls. The organization he works for, Nightwatchman, is a conspiracy-theory-loving podcast that epitomizes the maxim “it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.” And on the subject of what’s happening in Turner Falls, vis a vis several recent moves by IMTECH, Nightwatchman’s screeds may be closer to the truth than anyone realizes:

QUOTE
As an easy point of comparison here, let’s talk about the nicotine patch. That thing that only sits on the surface of your skin and contains a chemical that had already been heavily researched. And guess how long it took for the FDA to approve that? Thirty-nine months. How about the pacemaker? Eighty-three months. Even now, slightly improved pacemakers can take years to reach the market. But you’re telling me that this little company out of Turner Falls makes a device that not only goes inside the body, but contains more groundbreaking technology than the Google overlords managed to conjure up last year, and THAT gets an exemption?
END QUOTE

While corporate shenanigans birthing monstrous pandemics seems almost too on the nose for a horror novel coming out in this neverending year of 2020, the relationships of our heroes, amongst themselves and with their families, is only one of the things that elevates The Loop from your standard, and in this case well-written, nutjob nightmare. The raw tangle of our heroes’ emotions as they move through the horrors of adolescence in a time of bodily peril is depicted with nuance and sympathy, and nowhere more so than with our main protagonist Lucy. Her conflicting feelings are messy and believable, as is her understandable rage at the situations she finds herself in:

QUOTE
She tried to ignore the feeling that rolled up from her heart into her mind and made her want to tear the towel in her hands to shreds and smash the mirror and kick a hole in the door and keep rending the reality around her until all of it was subatomic and floating in a cloud around her anger. She imagined herself tilting her head back and opening her mouth to scream again, only this time her mouth kept opening and her jaw detached like a snake’s and she kept splitting until she was cleaved in two and all that came out of her was white flame. She shook and waited for the bad energy to leave her mind, and wondered what happened to all the rage in her body when she trapped it inside like that.
END QUOTE

It’s truly unusual to find a heroine of color who’s allowed to be angry and confused and ruthless and self-sacrificing all at once. Lucy feels complicated and real, which only serves to underscore the horror of all the gory, terrible things that are happening all around her. This is not a book for the faint of heart, but it was cathartic for me, as a brown person, to see an adolescent version of myself make the best of a hideous situation. It’s nice, too, that The Loop comes out during Hispanic Heritage Month, showcasing a Latina heroine who deserves to become iconic.

This book was super creepy and intense! Really gory in parts, funny in others, and still heat warming sometimes? Really
Enjoyed this, thanks to the publisher for sending it over!

Well. Know up front that this is violent and gory. And oddly, sometimes funny. Turner Falls looks like it's a sweet little town in Oregon but the teens there are as rotten to those who are different as teens anywhere. AND then the rich kids are infected with a parasite that turns them into killing machines. Lucy and her friend Bucket, the kids they picked on, are the ones who pull together a small group to fight back. Lucy is the main thing here- she's a good character. The rest might feel a bit cartoonish but that's ok because you will be turning the pages. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This would make a good movie.

It’s extremely fast paced. Lots of splatter and gore, but I’m okay with it. I can’t say I really like the idea, this is the zombie apocalypse but with a bio-engineered rapidly mutating octopus thing. Towards the end the thing can perform miracles but has weirdo limitations for the “good” guys to win. But like I said it was fast paced and I had a fairly good time reading it.

There are a couple of peeves though. I don’t feel entirely comfortable with a poc main character written by a non poc author (apologies if I’m wrong and the author is poc). In this case, Lucy is from Peru, and she’s in a white majority town in Oregon. The demographic is worse than a standard American town, she’s one of four or so poc students in her school. The other is her best friend, a Pakistani called Bucket. I’ll come to him in just a moment.

So one of the things this book tries to do is play with the horror/thriller trope of horny kids getting into a world of trouble because they couldn’t keep it in their pants, and in the course of this, we get to know a little too much of Lucy’s sexual fantasies. Tiresomely, she goes for the white jock. She knows how tedious this is, but does it all the same. In almost the same breath, she thinks about how she is an object of both disrespect and lust by the white guys at school. I mean. Let’s not. Her best friend is a Poc like herself, he’s not gay, but apart from one unconvincing moment of attraction that was supposedly there all along (it wasn’t), he’s not her type.

There are more unfortunate it’s okay for me not for you type moments. I had a passage typed out with them but then, it’s not the first time I’ve encountered such a thing. I What bugged me also are the conspiracy theory proven right thing, which is a pet peeve, and evil corporations that know not what they unleash, which is another pet peeve. Not because I trust evil mega corporations to do what’s best for the people but because it’s also lazy. The scientist the kids meet seems to not know what the hell this is - at first he says it’s artificial, then he flip flops to maybe it’s an alien thing, with no backing evidence whatsoever. He’s in shock perhaps? Whatever, I wasn’t very convinced and at this point I barely cared what they were as long as they were goners. But the book itself should have. Because then - if it was alien, would a bomb destroy everything? You’d need a nuke? Would you nuke Oregon? If it was artificial, code, would you have to destroy its central controlling unit? It was supposedly connected to some kind of super internet, so how controlled is it, really?

There’s also a surprising lack of diversity in the book - no, I know that’s the point or whatever, but POCs do have a presence in the tech industry. They may not be the money bags, but they’d have enough of them at the mid level, say. Enough of them would have kids who would be attending school with Lucy. It’s different if the industry itself was based elsewhere and chose this small town to experiment, but it didn’t work here. Come to think of it, how big was this town? It felt small, even though I was told the whole thing rapidly expanded.

It doesn’t really matter - ultimately this was something to be entertained by. And it’s reasonably entertaining. But since the book makes its main character consider all the social issues, it made me do so as well.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Wow, what a surprising wild ride this was. We have a nasty biotech company, IMTECH, in small town Turner Falls implanting a parasite in some entitled teens. Of course as in all parasitic implants it needs to feed and grow and expand and take over. The beauty of this story is that it basically is told over the course of a few days. A party from hell, a heart pounding car chase, oh and lots and lots of gore. Plus the hero teens are just amazing. Still saying teen things and having teen dreams. With a dynamic ending, fun and fast. Not for the faint of heart.

The Loop is a creepy sci-fi thriller. The cave scene was seriously intense. the premise of the novel is fascinating and very well written - very engaging. i like the podcast chapters as well.

Turner Falls is a small tourist town nestled in the hills of western Oregon, the kind of town you escape to for a vacation. When an inexplicable outbreak rapidly develops, this idyllic town becomes the epicenter of an epidemic of violence as the teenaged children of several executives from the local biotech firm become ill and aggressively murderous. Suddenly the town is on edge, and Lucy and her friends must do everything it takes just to fight through the night.

What an interesting summary! This is definitely what made me pick up this book. But the characters really kept me going! There is some gore and violence in this book, so be warned. However, I have to say seriously, what did I just read?????

It's fast paced and so relatable especially now.

This was one of the more creative horror/thrillers I've read in quite a while. I really liked the sci-fi aspect. This is not for the faint of heart as it is pretty violent and grisly. If that doesn't bother you and you are looking for a biotech zombie like horror show pick this up. It is action packed and pretty much never stops moving once things start to go bad.

Not only is this a horror book, but it touches on the human condition as well. Johnson also hits on bullying, racism, survival, ethics in science, and a lot more. This really shows up in the friendship dynamics between the main character Lucy and the relationships she develops as she tries to survive this biotech nightmare.

If you are easily offended or triggered by gore or violence of any kind, I wouldn't recommend this book. The story takes place is less than 24 hours so it doesn't pull any punches to keep things moving along. If you are looking for a weird, creative story, and are OK with graphic violence give this a go. I'm a horror fan, so I did enjoy this, but it made me uncomfortable at times. That is a sign of a good horror or thriller, so job well done by the author.

I was provided an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 Stars rounded to 4

Ok, so hear me out... This book was incredible in so many ways, but it also had so many unnecessary inclusions that I could have done without, hence the "not fully 4 star" rating. I'm not even referring to the content warning aspect of this novel; if you're the type of person who finds themselves offended by virtually anything, this probably won't be the book for you. It's violently graphic, gory, and uncomfortable, which are all things I enjoyed (gulp: what kind of a person does that make me?), but it also included full on animal violence and racial slurs that I just can't get behind. If you're looking for an all out bloodbath for fall, this is definitely it, and I felt like that World War Z meets Stranger Things comparison is fairly accurate. Also, it's really ambitious and successful in the aspect that the entire novel takes place in essentially one evening, so I guess what I'm saying it proceed at your own risk, but if you're looking for something that pushes the envelope, give The Loop a try.