Holy. Moly. The Loop was a whole ass whirlwind, and I was not ready for it. This book has been described as Stranger Things meets The X-Files and Stephen King. I was obviously sold by that description, as those are all on my list of most favorite things.

Small-town Turner Falls, Oregon. It's a place where some weird things have happened. Enough so that it's on the radar of the Nightwatchman podcast - a podcast that knows the truth is out there. After a student totally freaks and attacks a classmate and teacher, things only get weirder. Violent episodes begin rising among the teens in town, and everyone else? Basically catatonic. So together, Lucy, Bucket, and Brewer fight through the night to stay alive and save the town.

More than anything, The Loop is very Stephen King-esque, down to the triggers and content warnings. This book is very intense, gorey, and possibly offensive, depending on your own personal preferences. But that's all to say that there's a lot going on in this story, and if you're easily triggered then this may not be the book for you. But if you love Stephen King or Stephen Graham Jones, you'll definitely want to snatch this book up.

But this book is incredible. It pulled me in straight from the first page. It literally starts with murder and mystery, but then goes down this insanely violent hole that becomes a science fiction fright. The story-telling is intriguing. It's impossible to turn away from the plot and the way it's all put together. But I also love the way that the podcast is weaved into the story ultimately becoming a bit more integral within the plot.

I like that there were conversations about race and how people are treated differently based on their skin color. I think those conversations are important to have, and I especially love that the badass female main character is Peruvian with a best friend who's Pakistani. The book, while absolutely a sci-fi horror story, is also a story of more honest, real-life horror - the dangers of racism and classism. The difference between affluent teens and those who have to fend for themselves, and where they all end up in the end.

"This has always been inside of me, but I never let it out. I was a ghost instead. For too long." - The Loop, Jeremy Robert Johnson

I loved this book. As mentioned, the story-telling is incredible. I loved the plot and the MCs. I'm not sure I've ever read a book so fast-paced from beginning to end. The saying "they pulled out all the stops" rings so true, because there's not one bit of this book that even began to slow down. It was thrilling and terrifying and so smart, not to mention very witty and full of pop culture references. This was my first time reading anything JRJ, but if The Loop is indicative of his other works, count me in.

Jeremy Robert Johnson doesn't leave his characters behind in a gory, propulsive narrative that bolts forth, crashes expectations and keeps going. Thoughtful, exciting and characters that have the depth needed for the sense of loss you're bound to experience when everyone is put in the most horrific situations imaginable.
Highly recommended.

It took me a bit to get into this book. I kept going for the promise of it being as good as others said it was. I did eventually get hooked and and glad I resisted the urge to DNF. I liked the main character, Lucy, and her spirit. She has a never give up attitude even when things got really bad. The worse they got the more she was willing to give and gave. Until the very end she stayed strong. Even after losing more and more she never just said "I give up"
The ending was not what I expected which was a good thing. I hate it when I see the ending come a mile away. But, the ending was not what I hoped for either. Thank you to NG, the author, and publisher for allowing me to read this book. I am giving this read a solid 4 stars

I really really struggled to get through this book, and I really really wanted to like it. It started off pretty promisingly but fell apart pretty early on. Honestly, had I not been on the hook for a review, I would have given up on it around the 30% mark.

There was just too much going on - the outbreak/survival plot, the conspiracy/technology subplot, random romance asides, and racial/socioeconomic commentary. None of it was handled well and it all suffered. I think if they just focused on the first two, which were the saving grace and earned it the 2 stars, then it could have been a 3 or 4 star read.

Just pass on this one. It's not worth the time or effort to read. I think being attacked by one of the infected would have been less painful than getting through this. I'm not even going to discuss the problems with having a white male being the author of a teenage, Latinx girl.

A gory modern take on the distopian future. We'll written, draws you in through good action and dialog

Turner Falls, located in Oregon, is home of a government experiment gone wrong. When teenagers go on a murderous rampage fueled by a tentacle entity that links the teens of the town, Lucy and her friends fight to survive.
This is a grizzly and gory book following a harrowing night with Lucy and her friends having to fight off rabid, violent teens. It was a very interesting concept and the action picks up about halfway through. The violence, drug use, and sexual (and sexual violence) conversations seem far more gratuitous than necessary, which seemed to have been a tool used to highlight the dystopia of this tourist town. However, the entity seemed to feed off the already violent nature of the teens. Though a terrifying and bizarre villain and chain-of-events, I found myself not caring about any of the characters (with the exception of Bucket, who still was a meh). My main problem was the female characters and, especially, Lucy. Why did Lucy have to be from Peru? I feel like this was an attempt of "othering" her to community into which she is adopted rather than contributing anything substantial to her as a character. Overall, I finished reading it because I wanted to see how it ended, but did not care for the characters and their characterization or the people of the town.

Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for sending me an ARC of The Loop in exchange for an honest review.

The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson reaches high in both body count and Evil Dead levels of ultra-violence, as teens in a small town in the Pacific Northwest are altered by a newly arrived tech company, creating instead of good teens, more a flesh rendering group of students. The heroes are a plucky band of outcasts, minority misfits who have to evade the evil hordes. And that's it. There are some narrative twists, different POVs, a radio show covering the weird goings on,but the characters who sound so different really are not, and spend so much time evading, escaping and running I ceased to care about what happened. The idea while not new is interesting, the execution not so much.

What a fun book! Conspiracy theorists will flock to this one, and with good cause. You won’t be able to put this one down

The Loop is not what I would call an enjoyable read. That doesn’t mean it’s *bad,* or not worth reading; on the contrary, the reason it is unenjoyable is because it is so ENORMOUSLY successful at what it does. If you’re in the market for a technologically-advanced apocalypse that still looks like the world we live in today, that’s what’s on display here.

Given that the root cause of the situation around which Johnson’s novel revolves has to do with technology, comparisons to Black Mirror are perhaps inevitable; and yet, The Loop is somehow more visceral, something that settles itself inside your heart and your stomach and yanks a little bit at your insides at every turn. You really WANT everyone to survive — especially if you, like protagonist Lucy, were something of a misfit when you were a teenager — but you also know that all bets are off.

It’s not an optimistic read. But it’s an important read. And it will scare the PANTS off you.
Or maybe just your smartwatch.

Very well developed characters and an extremely engaging story. Well thought out and very suspenseful story line that keeps the reader guessing until the final twist! This is the book to read this year! Highly recommended!

This was a fun, wild ride. When teenagers all of a sudden turn into raving murders, it’s all up to a group of outcasts to save their town. And the reason for the inexplicable murder spree: a big tech organization. The bigger question is, was this done on purpose or just a science experiment gone wrong?

I received a copy of this novel through netgalley And the publisher in exchanged for an honest review.

I had never heard of Jeremy Robert Johnson until last year when I allowed myself to get back into reading more and continued to see recommendations for this novel all over my Twitter feed. So when it became available on netgalley I jumped at the chance to read it.

It wasn’t what I expected, it had substance and heart. I felt myself compelled to feel pain for the main characters as they struggled with stay alive. I found myself yelling out “yeah” when they would defend themselves against the hive and found myself lost in the short but sweet love story.

I knew I would be hooked from the first lines, continued to plunge deeper into the story day by day, sometimes even having to force myself to stop reading in order for me to do anything else in my day.

So glad I found this author, so glad this novel continued to pop up on my Twitter feed from people recommending it, and so glad I read it so that now I can recommend it to my friends and family and followers. Simply a great read.

With the state of the world as it is and man made destruction everywhere you look, this book was made just to make those fears justified! This book was a great horror packed adventure with blood and gore (trigger warning for those that it may offend) and everything not nice. For horror and conspiracy fans everywhere!

Wow. What did I just read? Horror, sci-fi, with VERY graphic detail. This story is not for the faint at heart but I enjoyed it anyway. We all just have to look at the train wreck don’t we?
Many thanks to Gallery Books and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Stranger Things meets World War Z in this heart-racing conspiracy thriller.

If that line is not a great hook line I don't know what is.

This was a good book. It's wild read which is gritty, raw, wild and fun. It's got gore, horror, bloodbath... you name it!

I don't want to reveal more but be warned that this might not be everyone's cup of tea.

For me it was a stimulating, action packed, disturbing read and I enjoyed it!


Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for sending a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

Wow, what a fun book. This thing was an absolute blast to read. It feels made to be a movie. Very cinematic. I’ve seen a lot of reviews calling this a zombie book, and it just like is objectively not that. I don’t know what people are comparing this to that makes them think of zombies, but don’t go into this expecting that. It has much more of a sci-fi angle to it, and is more about something causing people to lose their minds and become incredible violent. You find out what that is pretty early on into the book, but I still won’t spoil it here because it’s still pretty neat. It doesn’t really break any new ground and got a little repetitive in the last quarter or so, but it was still very fun, absurdly gory (which I loved as a huge horror movie fan), and had a great protagonist whose voice and thoughts I really enjoyed reading. Thanks to Gallery Books and NetGalley for the ARC.

Lucy is a high school student on the verge of a much needed summer vacation, which she plans to spend with her best friend, Bucket. But after attending an end-of-the-year party in the caves near the outskirts of Turner Falls, it is clear the summer will be anything but relaxing. Suddenly, the “best and brightest” kids of Turner Falls are turning into savage killers, bent on murdering anyone who crosses them: and the whatever has ahold of them is quickly spreading. Lucy and her friends have to figure out what happened to the kids, as well as how to reverse it, before things get any worse.

I had so many hopes for this book and I was let down by all of them. Definitely not the way I wanted to start out 2021.

For starters, this was billed as a “Stranger things x World War Z” crossover, and although I know nothing about the latter, I was a big fan of stranger things. But the only comparison I could see was a foreign entity terrorizing the town (a pretty vague similarity). And while Stranger Things had an excellent plot, lovable characters, and lots of suspense, this book had none of the above.

By the end, what little plot was built up was absolutely pointless. The characters are all pretty annoying, there is a completely unnecessary amount of gore, and the details of the outbreak only get more and more bizarre. I feel like the author was going for shock value with every aspect of his writing, from the risqué comments made by all of the characters, to the absolutely over the top violence, and everything in between.

Which leads me to my next point: this is not a YA book. I’m over 20 years old and I can’t imagine someone the same age as these characters (middle of high school) or younger reading it. I didn’t even want to read it. The only two themes seemed to be sex and violence.

I also want to point out that the author of this book, I am fairly certain, is white, and the main character of the book, Lucy, is Mexican. She experiences lots of racism and slurs used against her throughout the story. I am in no way qualified to speak on the accuracy of her representation, but if any of my POC friends have read this, please let me know your thoughts!

The only reason this gets 2 stars is because, for some odd reason, I was compelled to keep reading through each horrible turn. Maybe it was grim determination, or a hope that somehow things would get better. Either way, the ending was seen worse than the beginning, and I was left disappointed.

Rating: 2/5
Content warnings: LOTS of violence, mentions of sexual assault, suicide, death of family members

This was an amazing novel. Highly recommended for fans of the genre. Will be recommending the book for purchase.

I was initially drawn to this book because it's set in my hometown. What a weird ride it was. The story starts slow, lots of character building and pretty tame, but then just lets loose toward the end. It was wild, fun but very, very graphic, which I don't normally read. I had this weird experience reading it because I could perfectly picture all of the locations mentioned in the book from growing up there. Also it was fun catching slightly off references and familiar landmarks and roads- who even remembers Beef n' Brew? Thanks Jeremy Robert Johnson for this fun, gruesome read that made me see this little town in an entirely different way.

So this is basically one of those 90s splatterpunk teen horror movies, complete with lots of unnecessary and random lines about sex and porn. I don't understand why it had to be so weirdly crass? Took me completely out of the narrative. These teens also didn't feel believable to me as teens at all, but I've seen reviewers who have felt just the opposite, so I guess it depends on what circles you ran in as a teen.

Anyway, the book starts off with a bang, slows down a bit, and then picks up the pace and it's nonstop action and a lot of really, really gory violence. Seriously, strong stomachs needed here! A lot of it did feel like it was inserted for shock, but I suppose the point of a story like this is to shock, so it was fine. It's very nihilistic and bleak but I also really love stories about science gone wrong, and hey, now I know that octopuses are really goddamn fucking weird and I'd love to read a book about cephalopods now, thanks!

Overall I didn't love the characters or the narrative voice or a lot of the choices being made, but it was a fun, quick ride with an ending that was...courageous, shall we say, so I'm being generous with my rating.