Quarantine: The Loners by Lex Thomas

Reviewed by Evan Walsh

The Loners is about a high school in Colorado. A testing plant north of the school accidentally creates a virus that can only live in the body of pubescent teens and is lethal to everyone else. David and his younger brother Will are driving in when a teen with the virus enters the east wing. The government launches a missile to stop the outbreak but it failed to stop the virus from contaminating all the teens. Suddenly the government put a roof over the quad and every few weeks a small hatch was opened and they dropped food and other supplies through it. With the arrival of the military came a “graduation booth” where kids who the virus has exited can leave. With the arrival of food, gangs were formed: Varsity, who only let in sports players, the freaks who only let in well, freaks, the skaters, who would spend most of their time fighting or doing tricks on their skateboards, the nerds who would act as medics for the school and sold books and phones that were rendered pretty much useless, the pretty ones, and the sluts an all girls gang. Among the gangs there were “scraps”, those who weren’t in gangs. 4.2 stars out of five on Barnes and Noble and 3.9 on Goodreads