Nemesis

Brendan Reichs

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

Orphan Black meets Lord of the Flies in this riveting new thriller from the co-author of the Virals series.

It's been happening since Min was eight. Every two years, on her birthday, a strange man finds her and murders her in cold blood. But hours later, she wakes up in a clearing just outside her tiny Idaho hometown - alone, unhurt, and with all evidence of the horrifying crime erased.

Across the valley, Noah just wants to be like everyone else. But he's not. Nightmares of murder and death plague him, though he does his best to hide the signs. But when the world around him begins to spiral toward panic and destruction, Noah discovers that people have been lying to him his whole life. Everything changes in an eye blink.

For the planet has a bigger problem. The Anvil, an enormous asteroid threatening all life on Earth, leaves little room for two troubled teens. Yet on her sixteenth birthday, as she cowers in her bedroom, hoping not to die for the fifth time, Min has had enough. She vows to discover what is happening in Fire Lake and uncovers a lifetime of lies: a vast conspiracy involving the sixty-four students of her sophomore class, one that may be even more sinister than the murders.

A YA summer blockbuster thriller for fans of The Maze Runner and The 100.

'A twisted web of conspiracy and apocalyptic mayhem that kept me reading all night.'

Review by Chrissi (310817) Rating (8/10)

Review by Chrissi
Book Source: Publisher
Rating 8/10
As a child, could you imagine dying? Min died for the first time on her eighth birthday. A man came and he killed her. But he kind of didn’t, because she woke up in the woods. It happened again on each even numbered birthday. She has a reputation for being strange which is not helped by the fact that she lives in a trailer and her mum works the graveyard shift in a diner. Her best friend is Tack, and together the two of them support each other against the awfulness that is school and teenagers. Noah is from the other side of town, he lives in a nice house and his family run local businesses which employ a number of local people. He runs with the rich and popular set and never in a million years would guess that he can have a lot in common with Min apart from being in the same year at school.

Min doesn’t like her therapist, she feels that she cannot trust him as he writes his reports and she refuses to communicate with him. Unbeknownst to her, Noah sees the same therapist but does not share her antipathy for the man. There is something a bit strange going on in Fire Valley, a community isolated from civilisation by a narrow bridge across a deep chasm. The world outside Fire Valley seems to be going mad, there are reports of bad things which prompt the people to isolate themselves from the outside world. In amongst this, another child from their class dies and Min and Noah realise that something is going on, and that there might be others being killed and not dying.

As events proceed apace, it becomes apparent that Noah and Min are apart from their peers and that there are secrets kept within the community of Fire Valley.

I cannot say much more as there would have to be whole klaxons and flashing lights thing for a spoiler; I am not a great one for guessing the trajectory of plotlines as I read, but I really did not see any of this happening. I kind of don’t understand some of it, the whole dead/alive thing kind of escaped me, but it made for a fast-paced story and I cannot resist one of those.
Chrissi (31st August 2017)