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.

Ok, so I’m kinda making a promise to myself about the reviews that I write during *gestures wildly* all this. Which is that…I’m just gonna do my best. Which I try to do anyhow. All I’m saying is…don’t count on me for any kind of clear-eyed, coherent reviews right now, because. Oof. What a time to be alive.

So, THE LOOP! This is the first full length novel of Jeremy Robert Johnson’s that I’ve read, having only read his collection of short stories, ENTROPY IN BLOOM (which contains a story called “Persistence Hunting” which is easily one of my favorite short stories of all time).

The blurbs for this one compare it to things like STRANGER THINGS & THE X-FILES, two of my nearest & dearest shows, so naturally I was excited!! And this book did not disappoint in any way…oof. This is just a buckle-up-and-hold-the-fuck-on, gnarly, bonkers horror novel, and one that gives you a cast of instantly likable characters to firmly root you into the story.

The story is set in the town of Turner Falls, Oregon, a quiet, coastal town, which is somewhat unremarkable except for the massive biotech company, IMTECH, which calls Turner Falls home.

At the center of the story is Lucy, an adopted Peruvian teenager. She had an extremely traumatic early childhood, but now lives in a stable, loving home. Her best friend is a boy named Bucket, who is Pakistani. As two kids of color in a mostly white town, Lucy and Bucket don’t have the easiest time of things. There’s also a pretty clear delineation in Turner Falls regarding class, and this factors heavily into the impending horror, but…that’s not something I’m gonna get into here!

Lucy, Bucket, and another friend of their’s, Brewer (who Lucy is kinda-sorta crushing on), band together for one BATSHIT INSANE night to fight back against an outbreak of extreme weirdness & grisly violence. Shit gets wild.

I’ve come to realize something about myself over the last couple years, which is that I am VERY susceptible to and SUPER freaked out by claustrophobia scenes in books. There’s a scene somewhere in Mira Grant’s PARASITOLOGY trilogy that got to me, and a scene in Grady Hendrix’s WE SOLD OUR SOULS where my actual soul left my body I was so afraid.

And goddamn, add THE LOOP to the list of books with an absolutely NIGHTMARE FUEL claustrophobic scene, because fucking yikes. I don’t do a whole lot of caving living in New England (read: none caving) and Jeremy Robert Johnson has ensured it will stay that way.

This was a great read, and a book that I flew through at a time where my attention span has been…pretty lacking. I really loved Lucy & Bucket & Brewer…they just felt like very authentic teenagers, reacting to the seemingly-apocalyptic events in some ways you might expect, and in other more blood-drenched, surprising ways. They’re just a cool group of friends to spend a truly horrifying night with!

THE LOOP is a weird, funny, timely, and frequently grotesque book. I dug the hell out of this one! Many thanks to Saga Press for the copy!!