Swarm #BookReview

Jennifer D. Lyle | pub Nov. 2023 | 336pp

I happened to be cruising these WordPress Book review streets, and I came across The Boozy Bookworms review for Swarm – loved it! (Please click the link and check her out, btw) Thanks for the book recommendation and as promised I have read and enjoyed the book!

For the most part, I avoid YA. Its the thinly veiled toxicity for me gang -a trainwreak of transparent tropes, hero’s powered by abandonment and abuse, women valued based on their fertility, or capacity for suffering, pilgrimages in the name of royalty and/or marriage, all wrapped in 16 year old bodies, out past midnight, with no adult supervision. Please, come get ya kids. 😖🙄😂

Anyways – to me, the kids in Swarm were like the anti-trope for the genre. And, considering how our climate is behaving, the plot is certainly believable!

The book starts with us finding high schooler, Shur (she,her), gazing out of a classroom window, when she sees a huge monarch butterfly landing on a nearby building. It looks beautiful, but then more show up, and her classmates cellphones start pinging emergency warnings for everyone to take cover. Apparently, the things are everywhere and the government recommends a stay in place order. She and her older brother decide to go pick up their younger brother and get home. No huddling in the school auditorium for them! And, as the eldest of 3, I would have made the same decision!

Shur, her twin brother Keen, and their two besties Jennifer and Nathan, make their way to pick up the twins baby brother from kindergarten. En route to the house, they witness the butterfly’s attacking and killing people. Once they pick up the kid, the bunch makes their way to the twins home to barricade themselves in as the butterfly’s begin their violent reign. They find and cook food, protect themselves against one another, the killer butterflies, and human zombies.

Good YA or not, our hero must overcome something – in this case, Shur must overcome her debilitating anxiety at every turn. It’s been a life long battle for her but the recent loss of her dad has made it much worse. She’s just spent weeks in an institution and no one around her is confident she can make it through this – including herself. She is our narrator and we listen to her work through her most anxious moments and ultimately overcome them as our hero.

Pros: YES! Killer butterfly apocalypse? Sign me up! I think we wind up blaming the killer butterflies on recent shifts in climate change. Like oversized cicada, these bad boys will show up every several thousand years. Meanwhile, if they bite you and you don’t die, you get to turn into a walking, blood thirsty zombie! Fun times.

The was so readable for me, I think I finished it in a weekend. I enjoyed the banter between the teenagers and how they managed their situation. They weren’t written to sound overly mature – when they should have been scared- they were. They went from wanting their mommies, having to deal with a bored kid, making decisions to stay or leave, fighting one another, folks outside, and death. And even when I wanted to casually write off one as not important – they all played a part of the greater story and demonstrated need. Even Jennifer who tended to play the ‘flake’ against Shur’s super serious, overly worried mother figure.

Cons: Shur’s anxiety could have been a named character. I get it, but It’s not an emotion or state I relate with, so it got long in the tooth for me. And the way the other teenagers spoke of it was a little weird, ‘Is this how you feel all the time?’ Uh? Im not sure someone’s irrational anxiety about what to choose in the cafeteria lunch line is the same as your anxiety around life after a killer butterfly apocalypse..but carry on.

I believe characters, like Shur, existing offer great representation to those who can relate to her anxieties. Cheers. I mean Shur even comes out of this with a boyfriend. Go awf anxious queen!

Who knew a YA novel would be a 5 star read for me?! I think of these kids all the time, and I hope the author decides to revisit these guys for a second book. Her next release is in November this year and I will be buying on publish. Good read! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️