Quarantine: The Loners

Thomas, Lex Quarantine: The Loners,  404 p. Egmont, 2012.  Language: R (100+ swears, 10+ ‘f’); Mature Content: PG-13 (drinking, drugs and implied sex); Violence: R (blood soaked).

It’s the first day of school for freshman Will and his older brother Dave, who has lost his girlfriend and quit the football team.  Then the school is on lockdown because of a mysterious virus that seems to kill anyone over 18.  Months later, school has become more than the hell than it usually is.  Now all of the regular cliques have formed gangs for mutual protection and dominance.  The Loners and the Losers are on the fringes, barely surviving, until Dave becomes their leader.  Now the Losers are pushing back.  But anger and betrayal are the name of the game when it comes to life inside high school.  

This book makes The Hunger Games look like a bedtime story.  It seems to be even more of an exercise in humiliation and carnage, then having any actual point to it.  Lord of the Flies can’t touch this for sheer brutality.  Its like a car accident – you know shouldn’t look, but you can’t drag your eyes away.  While the struggles between the gangs and the interpersonal relationships are interesting, they take back seat to the violence, making the book pointless beyond the blood-spatters.  

NOT RECOMMENDED.  Cindy, Library Teacher.