The Loop

Starred review from June 22, 2020
This unputdownable coming-of-age thriller from Johnson (Skullcrack City) melds body horror, conspiracy theories, and bizarre science gone wrong. Lucy and her friend Bucket are two of the only brown kids in the majority white Turner Falls high school, and are used to abuse from other kids and the feeling of being outsiders. But when an evil corporation, IMTECH, decides to test its top-secret biotech on the town’s teenagers, bullying becomes the least of their problems. At a party, Lucy and Bucket witness their classmates brutalizing each other, the result of being affected by the biotech. Together with Lucy’s crush and a local conspiracy theorist, Lucy and Bucket must survive the night and save their classmates from themselves. Johnson has a gift for lightening up dark moments with humor and human connection, and though set over the course of an all-night gore-fest, the well-shaded characters are given plenty of room to breathe; the moments of quiet make the scares all the more powerful. Fans of The Twilight Zone, The X-Files, and Stranger Things will be especially thrilled. Agent: Molly Glick, CAA.

July 1, 2020
Weirdness invades a small Oregon town as a government experiment gone wrong escapes containment. Where to start with the pop-culture influences that erupt in this second novel by Johnson, author of the novel Skullcrack City (2015) and the story collection Entropy in Bloom (2017)? It opens with a Goonies/Super 8 vibe: There's a bunch of high school misfits led by Lucy, a Peruvian adoptee whose closest friend is "Bucket" Marwani, whose Pakistani heritage makes him another brown kid targeted for abuse by their classmates. The nightmarish scenario goes all Stephen King's Cell when one of the kids' classmates goes berserk and kills a teacher before perishing himself. In the meantime, we're getting broadcasts from the Nightwatchman, a self-styled radio shock jock pulling the curtain back on the utter weirdness erupting in Turner Falls, Oregon, � la Welcome to Night Vale. When things really kick off, it looks like a modernization of the townies-versus-⁠rich-kids trope until the whole thing goes to hell and Lucy and her posse are just fighting for their lives. If you're into this kind of thing, there are some carrots, like Lucy having her first kiss, which is kind of sweet, but as our heroes descend into the (inevitably) human-made nightmare, it gets pretty grotesque. Is there a secret laboratory? Check--in the supersecret IMTECH facility near our little village of idiots--making something that has gotten completely out of control. Lucy is a fierce protagonist, but from this point it evolves into a wetwork nightmare straight out of Chuck Wendig's daydreams. There's some prescient dark humor here, too: "Shoot, man. Maybe. That's usually how it goes, right? But I don't know about this situation. The whole city is on fire, man. I don't think these guys are checking bank balances before they start murdering people. Could be the old rules, rich, poor, none of it means much anymore." A wickedly entertaining but also grotesque teen nightmare that's pretty much Stranger Things meets Rogue One.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2020
Turner Falls, Oregon is an idyllic town with a biotech company at its center and is the perfect setting for one of the best supernatural thrillers of the year. In a high school classroom, a young man snaps, violently attacking and killing the teacher with his bare hands. Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident. A group of outcast teens, led by the narrator, Lucy, herself a survivor of trauma, quickly comes to realize that the town's rich kids have all been infected with an unnatural technology that wants to replicate itself at all costs. This fast-paced tale is told over one desperate night, as the protagonists try to stay alive and stop the tech before it can spread beyond Turner Falls. But Johnson gives readers more than a thrill ride: The Loop is also a cautionary tale and a satisfyingly dark satire of, well, everything, a highly original apocalyptic tale that is uncomfortably relevant. Imagine Blake Crouch and Mira Grant re-writing Chuck Wendig's Wanderers (2019)?fans of all three authors are part of the wide audience who will flock to this heart-pounding and deeply unsettling tale.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)