Review: Virals - Kathy Reichs

Where I got it: ARC from publisher
Rating: 3.5 stars 
Cover Rating: 3 stars (meh.)
Genre: Young Adult  
Publication Date: November 2, 2010 
Publisher: Razorbill
Page Count: 456 p. 


Tory Brennan is the niece of the famous Dr. Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist. Tory is also quite a little science fiend and that is what got this all started. She found some dog tags and they were too dirty to get a name off of, Tory just had to know who owned the tags. Knowledge doesn't cause her trouble, it's probably all the breaking and entering she has to do in order to gain the knowledge. When she finds a shocking experiment in the LIRI lab, Tory and her friends end up with a lot more than the bargained for and it only gets worse when they discover who the dog tags really belonged to.

This was a really interesting book. I love books that have science stuff in them. Tory's friends were fantastic and quite well developed. Each friend had character traits that made them easily distinguishable from each other, which made the story flow nicely. I did have a problem with Tory sometimes though. She is this teenager who is really into science and has this super analytical mind, but she sometimes notice more artsy things, I guess we could write it off as an effect from the virus. It just didn't seem like the same person making these observations. This story was action-packed and a great mystery too. It was interesting to see where each new clue would lead the Virals. It was also very fascinating the science behind the changes due to the parvovirus. This was a really fun and exciting read and I highly recommend it to boy and girl readers who want action and science in their everyday reading adventures.

First Line:
"A gunshot is the loudest sound in the universe."

Favorite Line:
"That night, the storm raging inside me broke."