I don’t think this one was really for me, I struggled to connect with the plot and the characters and expected something a bit different from the blurb

This book surprised me. In places, it amazed me. Because it plays with expectations in such a unique manner, I was almost expecting to be wrong-footed at the turn of a page.

Our story starts like many other horror tales - teenagers with their teenage problems (relationships, drink, drugs, bullies, etc etc). But in what seem to be no time at all, the problems become life-threatening for the protagonists.

I was never sure who would survive this book. When the typical 'survivor' types fell (you can read the book yourself to find out how!), the odds changed... and very quickly, all bets were off.

The tone and action zip along as fast as such events likely would in real life. Normality turns to crisis, then the need to escape, all routes being blocked. Then what? We're not even halfway through yet!

I'm trying very hard to keep this vague, as it is best to go into the book with as little information as possible. We get hints that All is Not Well from the get-go, but while we may see hints of 'Cabin in the Woods' or 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' (and as a British reader, even 'The World's End' at points!), this is very much its own story.

The characters feel real, which leads to some genuine sorrow at key moments (I was reminded of the '28 Days Later' scene when trusted loved ones are taken away from us. Our heroes act as teenagers would, I think, which is an achievement given the push for 'trendiness' in YA fiction. This will not be adapted as a 'Hollyoaks' clone!

Ultimately, time spent with this story is rewarding. I'm happy to recommend, and may well return for a reread before long, to see what I might've missed before. Excellent stuff.

This book was dark and disorienting. I might pick up more by this author because I really liked the premise of this one and some of the choices that he made were exactly what I wanted out of this. That being said, it didn't go quite far enough.

A quick DNF review. Lucy is a high school student who witnesses a horrific event where one of her pupils seems to go mad attacking a fellow pupil and teacher in front before being shot themselves. Lucy goes to a teenage drinking party on caves and sees even more violence. Lucy keeps pondering her life as she and her best friend are non-white kids in this exclusive school she detests.

This for me became a novel where stuff happened but there was no exploration of consequences. I was struggling to believe that US pupils who have seen such a violent event would just shrug it off as something weird. The authors use of non-white characters felt very clumsy highlighting their race but very shallow characterisation to them beyond that beyond that and the plot seemed both very slow and predictable. By a hundred pages I did not care for anything in it as it felt a hollow story– sadly not one for me.

Ok, so there was no way I wasn't gonna read this book with after it whispered sweet nothings about a virus outbreak and promises of gore into my ear! AND comparing itself to World War Z... My zombie loving ass couldn't turn away from it! I was so thrilled that The Loop grabbed my attention from page 1. I didn't have to take time settling into the book or getting to know the characters. There was just something that I instantly liked about Lucy, the protagonist. Told from Lucy's perspective, The Loop is the story of a small town horror story. The odd one or two of the town's teenagers begin to act strangely.... violently but no one seems to initially think that there's any link between the incidents, nor a major cause for concern. Until one night after a party in the local caves, a large number of the teenagers suddenly become extremely violent and homicidal, killing people in the most horrific ways that they can. The easy read writing style and the teenage protagonist gave me YA vibes and it has been tagged by a few readers as YA on Goodreads, but this is not for the young 'uns my friends. There's plenty of the good stuff in there that would shock adults never mind kids.
I can see why the book was compared to a zombie novel because whilst those affected didn't become the traditional idea of zombies, they did become sort of mindless beings controlled by their violent urges constantly seeking out ways to 'scratch the itch'. And people could become infected by bites or body fluids of other infected. However, the story was a really big twist on the virus outbreak / zombie making it super unique and interesting. I loved this blend of horror and sci-fi but be warned, this is a gore fest at times (which I absolutely adored) and may not be to everyone's taste.

I pre-ordered The Loop long before Netgalley approved me for an ARC, having seen it everywhere I turned and with such great praise, it was a definite on my wishlist.
Small town takeover horror is my jam, especially scary when we're talking hive-mind, which is clearly where we are headed going into this novel.

You need a strong stomach for The Loop, Jeremy doesn't hold back on the gory descriptions, gruesome body horror is the backbone of this novel. The writing is descriptive enough to provide detailed imagery without losing a moment of tension under any heavy prose. It doesn't take long to leap into action and once it does there's no stopping!

The Loop is told in present tense from the first person point of view by Lucy, interspersed with some entertaining podcast scripts by your stereotypical internet conspiracy theorist. The narrative of these podcasts is so well written, I felt like I was listening to them rather than reading them.

I very much enjoyed reading The Loop, however I must say it is a cookie cutter. The structure of the novel, the setting, the characters, all of it will be familiar to any fan of this genre. The arc of the plot is almost comforting in its predictability.

This is the story of Lucy and her misfit friends Bucket and Brewer escaping a science experiment gone wrong. The characters were one dimensional, their roles in the story were basic and nothing much about them changed between before and after their world crashed down.

The blurb pitches this book as Stranger Things meets World War Z, both of which I loved. Now if that's what hooked you too then disregard it entirely. Aside from the age of the main characters, distinct lack of adult intervention and cannibalistic behaviour there was no comparison to either of those. In fact if you've ever seen the 90s horror movie The Faculty, I'd liken it to that.

The ending to this high speed horror novel redeems it's previous lack of ingenuity. A powerfully moving chapter that left me feeling glad I'd picked it up.

For a fun, quick read I'd recommend The Loop, but if you're looking for detailed character development or an intriguing plot you'd strike out with this one.

The Loop is intense! I wouldn’t classify this book under Young Adult as it deals with mature themes. The language is crass with a lot of sexual elements, and the violence and gore are unflinching. The main character, Lucy, had a troubled childhood and she lives with her adoptive parents whom she has complicated feelings for. Her friends, Bucket and Brewer, provide a nice balance in the group. I did find the teen conversations too much at times because they feel a little forced. But I liked seeing Lucy’s growth and her evolving relationships with the people she meets. I expected that some of the characters may not live to see the end but it was still unexpectedly moving.

The action scenes are relentless and brutal. I liked how the zombie tropes are applied here, from the gathering of strangers to the narrow escape from the horde of attacking creatures. The science parts are interesting – I learned more about octopus than I thought I would! There are also snippets of a podcast that focuses on an unexplained murder-suicide in Turner Falls. While I wish there’s an epilogue that wraps up the events, the ending is bold and left a lasting impression on me. A solid addition to the zombie horror subgenre!

A bloody, gory, twisted story that’s a whole lot of fun. There’s brilliant Stranger Things and The Faculty vibes, a touch of satire and social commentary. There’s evil corporations, crazy tech, conspiracy podcasters (well, I guess it ain’t really a conspiracy if…). There’s pain and survival and revenge and redemption. But above all, there’s Lucy, Bucket and Brewer, three friends trying to survive a night that turns into terror, as their peers turn into savage killing machines. Growing up in monster-ville sounds kinda hard, but makes for one damn fine sizzling read.

So this is billed as Stranger Things meets the X-Files, does it live up to that billing you may wonder, yes I can say it pretty much does.

Now before I get started this book contains racism, graphic murder, murder of teens, lots of recreational drug use and more murder. It’s not a cosy read.

Set in Oregon, the story falls Lucy, a teenager from Peru who has been adopted by a couple from the town of Turner Falls. She is made to feel an outcast due to the colour of her skin, racism is an everyday occurrence, but she finds solace with her friend Bucket, another outsider, his family hail from India. They are definitely not popular kids, and they don’t really care, they have each other.

Strange things have been happening in town, a mother and son are found dead, a teacher is gruesomely attacked by a student who then attacks another student. These are thought to be isolated events until the night it turns out that they are definitely not.

A party in a cave in not usually the hangout of Lucy and Bucket but along with their stoner pal Brewer they decide to join the cool kids to enjoy some underage drinking, what they find seems reasonably tame to begin with but sounds turns bloody as the teens start to change in to bloodthirsty murderers. The cause, they seem to be receiving information from an external source, one that is turning them in to killers. Lucy and Bucket escape but the other students bring their murderous rampage from the cave to the streets of the town, they seek fresh meat to play with. Can Lucy and Bucket survive?

This was a very violent book which may bother some readers but it does propel the reader through the horror and urgency of this one evening where everything goes horribly wrong. It was a gripping read as you feel the fear and horror as the kids are hunted down, you really do feel for the characters as everything they know falls away from them.

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved it, a proper ‘creature feature’ !! I cared about the main characters, they were so beautiful and flawed and brave; I was such a part of their journey that I actually cried in parts. I am going to look up Jeremy’s other books right now.

I wasn't too sure about this book when I started reading it. The story starts slowly, introducing us to the main character, Lucy, and her friend Bucket. It's well written, from a teenager's point of view, with all the insecurities, problems, and traumas teenagers carry around with them, mixed with racism and snobbery.

Then the story takes a dark turn, and you find yourself dragged along at high speed as horror overwhelms this small town in Oregon. It's non-stop, adrenaline-packed action from then on, interspersed with some short-lived moments of relief before the horror starts again.

It's gory, terrifying, and horrific, but also a stark warning about what could await us in the future if technology continues to experiment. A great read I recommend!

“There was the world behind them, and the world ahead of them, and all of it wanted them dead.”

Lucy, Bucket and Brewer are about to have a really bad couple of days. IMTECH, a medical supply manufacturer that employs most of their classmates’ parents, have been working on something new. Even the workers who have contributed pieces to this puzzle haven’t been told what the final picture will look like. All these teens know is that there’s been a recent string of tragedies in their usually quiet desert hometown of Turner Falls: a murder-suicide, a day to end the school year unlike any other and now a missing teen.

“We are all going to be okay.”

I’m having trouble figuring out what to say about this book and that’s not a problem I usually have. The thing is, for much of the first quarter I was dragging myself through the pages, tempted to DNF every time anything that I’ll politely call ‘locker room talk’ happened. I found the way that specific girls were spoken about, as if it was funny and as if it was appropriate to say at all, was disgusting. Call me a prude if you want but detailing derogatory sexual behaviour is not something that I want to see flimsily disguised as banter.

Then there’s the body horror, which is pretty intense in this book. If the thought of anything touching your eyes makes you squeamish, prepare yourself for exposure therapy on steroids. Most of the time the crunching bones and gallons of blood that no longer live inside veins belonged to humans. I’m personally all good with this type of horror, when the victims are human. However, not all of the casualties in this book were human and I am never going to be okay with reading about the abuse of animals, even in fiction.

“I don’t think there’s anyone who can help us.”

The overall feel of the book gave me ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’ vibes so it may be helpful if you don’t decide on a favourite character. Chances are pretty high that you’re going to see what their insides look like at some point. I didn’t connect with anyone so I wasn’t invested in anyone’s survival.

Class and racism were both mentioned throughout the book. The action remained fairly constant, although I didn’t experience the dread of the classroom scene anywhere else in the book. The descriptions of the bloodshed were easy to imagine and I liked the inclusion of the podcast transcripts.

Content warnings include abuse of an animal, alcoholism, body horror, bullying, drug use, graphic deaths of animals and humans, and racism.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Holy Moly this was INTENSE. I haven't read a horror novel anything like this for a while and my words. I bloody LOVED IT (pun intended). I couldn't put it down, I needed to know more, I needed to stop, I needed to get out of there and run. Way to put me through it Johnson. Blimey.

Okay breathe.

Checklist
- strong, likeable characters that you really don't want to die (and some the opposite)
- a believable plot that doesn't just come from nowhere to round the novel off
- great pacing that drives you to the finish line

Thanks to NetGalley, Titan Books and Jeremy Robert Johnson for an eArc copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

The Loop is a horror novel about a conspiracy in a small Oregon town that threatens to take over all of the residents, and a group of outcasts who have to fight to survive. Turner Falls is a little desert town with a large medical tech firm housed within it. For Lucy, it's a place where she's seen as an outsider: not originally from there, not white, and not one of the rich kids. When she goes to an underground cave party with her best friend Bucket, she doesn't expect much, but she definitely doesn't expect it to be the start of a fight for survival as teenagers start turning into murderers thanks to a strange signal.

The narrative centres around Lucy, with her the focus of the third person narration other than a few inserted podcast transcripts to get across the conspiracy side of things, and it has a classic horror-thriller plotline of a group of people coming together and then being under constant threat. Without wanting to give everything away, it follows a typical structure of a story in which people are 'turned' into something else, with a lot of violent deaths just as you get used to characters being there. The main horror element of the story starts quite soon into the novel, giving you chance to meet Lucy but unlike some horror books, not spending too long building up tension.

Though the main narrative is quite predictable (the blurb compares it to Stranger Things and The X-Files, though for me it was closest to the Sims 4 game 'Strangerville'), there were a lot of details that I particularly liked, including how the book dealt with Lucy's trauma both from her childhood and from the events currently unfolding. There was also a focus on class, both in terms of how it was people who were more privileged who were actually turned by "the loop" (as their families had jobs at the big tech/science company who was working on the project) and in terms of how it affects the lives of the residents of Turner Falls and how it gets ingrained in people and how they see themselves.

The Loop is both a readable horror story about a town impacted by an experimental science project and also a look at trauma and survival instincts. It's quite brutal at times so isn't for the faint-hearted and though the blurb mentions Stranger Things, it doesn't have its fun cheesiness, but rather a more bleak tone and more of an apocalypse vibe.

Do big corporations in fiction ever actually do anything to help people? It seems like they don't, and they certainly don't in The Loop as a dangerous infective organism makes its way through a small American town, causing untold death and destruction.

The Loop tells the story of Lucy, a teen living in Turner Falls, Oregon. A small town that does good business as a ski-resort in the winter, the place has started to change in recent years thanks to some big corporations moving into the area. One of these is IMTECH, and they're one of the chief employers in the town, but like so many evil corporations before them, they're up to no good.

Things begin to go bad when Lucy and her classmates witness something awful in their maths class one day. One of their fellow students begins to act strange, convulsing and saying weird things, before turning horribly violent, blinding another student in one eye and viciously beating their teacher to death. Despite the awfulness of the event the town is trying to act like it was just a single horrible tragedy, but other strange things are going on too.

Luckily, Lucy is far enough removed from the popular kids to avoid much of this, instead hanging out with her best friend Bucket at the local record store, or driving around buying baked goods. Lucy and Bucket are something of outsiders, and are treated differently to most of the other people in their age group, mostly due to them being two of the only non-white kids in their school. Lucy is from Peru, but after a tragic accident that saw her lose both her parents she was adopted by a white couple in Turner Falls; whilst Bucket is originally from India, but moved to the US following a tragic event in his past.

In a setting where everyone else was white, in the kind of YA action horror setting where most protagonists would be pretty bland dark haired Caucasian kids who think of themselves as an outsider but are probably actually quite well liked it's great to see some diversity in the leads. This story could have easily been written with white leads, and other than changing some details that don't hugely effect the narrative it would probably have played out very similar, but Jeremy Robert Jordan went out of his way to not just include some diversity, but put it centre stage.

Whilst things begin fairly slowly, spending time establishing the world of Turner Falls and giving you a chance to get to know it's main characters, when things really begin in earnest it changes the whole tone and pace of the book. It goes from a slowly unfolding mystery centred around these teens to a non-stop fight for survival, and there are few chances for the characters or readers to stop and catch their breath once the terrible events of the night start.

Jeremy Robert Jordan doesn't have an easy job with this book, not only does he have to make you care for the characters, even the ones we don't meet until later in the book, but he has to do all that whilst keeping the pace going and piling on the tension. I don't often like using this term to describe books, but it really does feel like a roller-coaster ride. There's the slow build, the ramping up of tension, and once you reach a certain point it hits the high speed, it throws you around and scares you, throwing shocks and jolts at you along the way, before coming in for an ending that will leave you stunned and breathless.

The book is also pretty violent, and has some intense scenes that I know horror fans are going to enjoy, along with the body horror that pervades the whole thing. There are moments that feel incredibly brutal, and Jeremy Robert Jordan doesn't shy away from the brutality of having ti fight for your survival. The book doesn't make action scenes into something designed to wow you, it's not the kind of story where people are taking punches and are able to to keep going. Instead, it's a book that demonstrates how brutal violence can be, and how fragile the human body is. Sadly, this does mean that people die throughout the book, and you're going to end up seeing characters that you care about suffer and even die. As such, it's not a book I'd reccomend to the faint of heart, and if you need to take some breaks to get through it all that's completely understandable; because it's a pretty intense ride.

The Loop is a book that I think is going to take a lot of people by surprise, because it's a lot of very different things. If you come to the book wanting a funny coming-of-age story you're going to get that, but you're also going to get heart pounding tension. If you're looking for edge of your seat thrills and shocking horror moments that's definitely here, but there's also a lot of heart, and moments of social commentary around things like race and class. It's a book that fits into so many different genre's, that draws elements from such a broad spectrum that it feels unique and new. In a world where so many YA books seem to deliver variations on the same kinds of settings and characters it's so refreshing to get something so completely different.