Monday, October 18, 2010

Virals by Kathy Reichs


Tory’s life has drastically changed. With her mom dead, she is living literally in the middle of nowhere with her newly found dad. Her dad works as a bio researcher on a very small town of the coast of South Carolina. Living on the one square mile island adjacent to the research facility, she befriends other bio researchers’ children who are equally as nerdy as her: Hi, Shelton, and Ben. The four of them love to make trouble especially on Loggerhead Island, the island of the research facility. When the crew discovers old military dog tags they are instantly curious as to how they could have gotten to an island that was uninhabited before the research facility was built. Their curiosity may have been the worst thing to happen to them. They are pulled into a big mystery with secret labs, hybrid wolf dogs, a cold missing person case, and the popular kids from school.  And Tory, Shelton, Ben and Hi’s lives are in danger.

The Good: Virals was such a refreshing change to all the books I’ve been reading. You hardly ever see just a plan mystery novel in the YA genre. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I read a mystery. And Virals was incredible one at that. It was high on edge of your seat suspense and low on romance, which I didn’t mind. With a small amount of biology it gave it a science-fictiony feel. All the characters gave the story some extra bonus points. Told from Tory’s point of view,  she was funny, a witty, and had the ability to surprise me even towards the end of the book. She was very intuitive and made me want to study more biology, a subject in which I hate.

The Bad: I was a little disappointed by the ending. While it was surprising, it wasn’t as twisty as I was expecting. Also Hi’s name confused me somewhat. As I am a skim reader, which is my term for you read very quickly that you almost assume what word should be there, I kept skimming over his name and then I would get myself confused as to who was talking. So that was my fault not Reichs but it was kind of annoying. 

The Ugly Updates: Virals is out November 2nd. This is Reichs first novel for YA though she has written several Adult books starring Tory's aunt. The TV show Bones on Fox is also based from her adult novels. Visit her site here.


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1 comment:

  1. Hi! I'm a new follower *waves and smiles*. This book is on my wish list. I can't wait to read it! Great review. :-)

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