The year’s most brutal, cinematic thrill ride is also one of its most critically acclaimed novels. Dazed and Confused meets 28 Days Later in this “wickedly entertaining,” (Kirkus Reviews) “volcano of a book” (Nathan Ballingrud, author of Wounds) as a lonely young woman teams up with a group of fellow outcasts to survive the night in a town overcome by a science experiment gone wrong. A Best Book … experiment gone wrong.
A Best Book of the Month for Den of Geek, Omnivoracious, Mystery & Suspense, and Tor.
A Goodreads’ 2020 Readers Choice Nominee for Best Horror, and one of the Best Books of 2020 for The Lineup, Booked, and Unsettling Reads.
Turner Falls is a small tourist town nestled in the hills of central Oregon. When a terrifying outbreak rapidly develops, this idyllic town becomes the epicenter of an epidemic of violence.
The Loop is a “wild and wonderfully scary novel” (Richard Chizmar, author of Gwendy’s Magic Feather) that offers a “hilarious and horrifying” (Brian Keene, author of The Rising) look at what one team of misfits can accomplish as they fight to live through the night.
“[A] harrowing thrill ride of the first order and an uncompromising page-turner, easily securing its spot as one of the best novels of 2020.” —Rue Morgue (featured “Dante’s Pick” Review)
“Like the best of Crichton or Bentley, it is a great beach read, but it is infused with the neon blood of a brave new writer… [A] kind of literary roller coaster. It will take you to thrilling highs and terrifying lows…” —Los Angeles Review of Books
“The Loop is the gore-soaked, anxiety-inducing, diabolically funny Richard Linklater/David Cronenberg mashup you never knew you wanted but can’t–or at least shouldn’t–live without.” —The Big Thrill
“Unputdownable…Fans of The Twilight Zone, The X-Files, and Stranger Things will be especially thrilled.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A satisfyingly dark satire of, well, everything…[a] heart-pounding and deeply unsettling tale.” —Booklist
“The Loop is a remarkably propulsive novel, cinematic in the best way, with perfectly tuned tension and excellent character choices…a headlong, straightforward pleasure.” —Locus
“The Loop is the Cronenberg film we never got.” –Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters and Wounds
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I really don’t have the words to describe The Loop.
I’m a Horror Junkie. I’ve read pretty much every popular horror book and even some greats that flew under the radar. The Loop is definitely one of those reads that will stay with me for a really long time. Top Notch writing, great storyline, great characters etc.
I really don’t want to spoil anything but I guarantee that this will be one of the better Horror books written in the last decade.
The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson is a brutal tale about a town that has fallen into chaos due to a science experiment gone very, very wrong.
This is a story that you will want to make sure to read well after you’ve eaten…
If you enjoy tales centered around high school students where every second is tense and there is violence at every turn, then I highly recommend this one to you! It was absolutely brutal!
TW: Child abuse, child murder, dog death, descriptive gore.
So that was intense!
Fast-paced and never boring with characters believable and hilarious. Highly recommend!
The premise of this book had me hooked and the wild ride this crazy, grotesque novel takes you on was insane! This horror/scifi was extremely fast passed and gory with twists and turns that keeps you turning the pages. If you. I enjoyed this book very much and recommend it to anyone who loves horror. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book that I received from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
“untested, highly experimental…mind-control implants”
I loved this horror story that takes place in a fictional town (that definitely reminds me of the small city of Bend) in the high desert of Central Oregon.
Tons of high tech companies have been moving to Turner Falls, Oregon and some people can’t understand why. This is a tourist town without a huge workforce but the companies keep coming. One of these companies is IMTECH and they have invented a new bio implant that they’ve started testing on some of their executives teenage children. As you can imagine, there are problems.
This tale got my attention from the beginning. One reason is that I live in Oregon and am very familiar with the Bend area. Another reason is that the action ramped up pretty darn quickly.
This is definitely a “creature feature” story but parts of it are over the top gruesome. But author Johnson does a great job of developing lead character Lucy Henderson, an adopted teen originally from Peru. The author also shows the indomitable human spirit that rears itself in some unlikely people.
I highly recommend this to those readers that like their horror with a side of blood and guts.
I received this book from Gallery Books through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read and review it.
The Loop is the Cronenberg film we never got. It’s a volcano of a book: violent, compassionate, relentless, and opulently strange.
The Loop is a wild and wonderfully scary novel — a genuine thrill ride stuffed with conspiracy theories, science gone wrong, and brutal terror.
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.
The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson is a standalone coming of age horror thriller with a science fiction aspect to it. Turner Falls, Oregon is a small tourist town that has recently seen an influx of biotech and related firms locating to it. Lucy and her friend nicknamed Bucket are juniors at the local high school and are the only minorities in the school. When a fight breaks out in class near the end of the school year, it is only the beginning of what is to come.
Lucy was a character that took a while to get to know, but was definitely someone you could root for. She had a distinct voice and her motivations seemed believable. The secondary characters were less three-dimensional except for Bucket and Brewer. However, they enhanced the story and the relationships seemed believable. The writing in the first third of the book did not flow well for me. However, it picked up as the action and stakes increased. Themes include family, trauma, racism, bullying, biotech research and development, violence, friendships, and much more.
Overall, this was an interesting and compelling read that had high stakes and some unusual plot twists. However, there are many instances of extreme violence and gore in this book as well as some language and I would not call this a fun read. If you are a fan of horror novels, then you may want to check this one out. Am I glad I read this one? Absolutely!
Many thanks to Gallery Books – Saga Press and Jeremy Robert Johnson for a complimentary digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley and the opportunity to provide an honest review. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way.