Happy Hour! Time for a quaran-tini.

The Quarantine series by Lex Thomas I feel was a highly underrated series; maybe because it didn't have much advertisement, but the books truly speak for themselves. It is a series of four books; which could have really ended at three, but the fourth book was a nice addition. If you are looking for something along the lines of The Hunger Games, Divergent, or Lord of the Flies than I would definitely recommend checking these books out. I finished this series within a week they were extremely hard for me to put down. The author really pulled me into the story, I had to know what was next (can we say page turner). If you are someone who doesn't like gore, sexual content, murders, bad language, and serious violence than I wouldn't read these books...but if you don't mind all of these things it is definitely a series to give a read. FYI this will be a longer post than usual just because I am reviewing 4 books instead of 1.

Spoilers ahead!!

Alright now lets get down to business...

The first three books were all based inside and on the outskirts of the high school in Colorado (the irony because I live here). Basically a child with a very contagious virus escapes a military facility where he was held captive and used as an experiment. He runs into the brand new high school to hide and find shelter. Well the virus is airborne and basically kills anyone who is an adult, all of the staff and some of the senior students start vomiting up their lungs and dying in front of the rest of everyone. The military bombs one side of the school and puts the entire school on quarantine; they bring in military with rifles to keep the students inside, a helicopter checking the perimeter, and they block off the entire school from the outside except for a small area in the middle which has access to from above (of course they can't escape through this small area). All of their hair turns white as a side effect from the virus. As they all approach their graduation dates they get a bloody nose and have to leave immediately, if they don't get out soon enough they start to hallucinate and then eventually throw up their insides as the adults did. The military has a process for them to graduate so that the students won't die inside the high school. When it is their graduation date they place their finger in a checkpoint which pricks them to test their blood. If they are negative they get to go through the white tents, get cleaned and exit to normal life, if it is positive the doors stay closed and a loud buzzer goes off.

In the first book (The Loners) and part way through the second (The Saints) they receive food and supplies by helicopter every two weeks. Of course things don't go according to plan they don't share the supplies (we all know if they did ration out the supplies everyone would have enough...that's boring). They create gangs to fight over all the best items, this is where a lot of the serious violence happens. Making everything more exciting, just like the drops in the hunger games whoever gets there first (you or them even if you have to kill the other person). Throughout the book the main characters (brother duo, David and Will) are trying to make it by to survive to their graduation dates. They stay away from the gangs keeping their chance of death at bay. As the story goes on it gets harder and harder for them to get items through the drops; as well as the younger brother (Will) has seizures which makes him a liability and none of the gangs want to take him in. They end up creating their own gang with all the reject kids throughout the high school, becoming one of the higher placed gangs. There are multiple gangs the freaks, varsity, the pretty ones (Davids ex girlfriend Hilary is the leader), the sluts, the geeks, the skaters, the nerds, the burnouts (they don't really show up till book three) and then their group the loners. Of course there is a villain and in this case its the very violent leader of varsity (Sam) who can't stand the brothers, mostly he hates David because they have history as well as he is dating David's ex Hilary. There are always major fights between these two until David escapes and Sam's wrath turns to his younger brother Will (book two).

As the story goes on the graduation tent begins to malfunction and they can't get tested on there own anymore the military comes in to examine them all once a month. There's ends up being a fight between the military and the students which causes the military to stop coming in and testing the students. As any good YA story goes there is a love triangle between Lucy, David, and Will; this brings on fighting between the brothers as well as fighting between Lucy and Will. There is plenty of love, betrayal, and fighting in this book, it really keeps you on your toes.

In the second book (The Saints) life continues to be complicated between Will and Lucy. The drops stop coming and a new group of kids from the outside arrives and tries to help the students escape; this ends badly they end up getting the walls closed off again by the parents. Now everyone is stuck inside the school, only a few escaped who will most likely end up dead on the outside. The parents are actually helping out the students by giving them food and supplies just like the military was, as well as starting the graduation process again. All of the gangs start to mingle more and more with each other and the loners end up becoming just Lucy and Will. They both end up joining different gangs, Will ends up in the new kids gang (the saints) and Lucy ends up with (the sluts). as the story continues Will and the leader of the saints (Gates) end up pushing the parents too far only because they found out that Sam is one of the parents son. They use Sam as collateral to get the items that they think they deserve and Sam ends up dead. Gates goes completely psycho and becomes obsessed with Will treating him as his little brother, this ends up pushing Will away to leave the Saints and hide from Gates. This causes an epic fight between all of the gangs where Gates ends up dead as well as the leader of the sluts (Violent). Will ends up leaving Lucy in the school after he realized he needs to graduate or die due to his bloody nose. He leaves on good terms with Lucy even though they have been fighting throughout this book as well as loving each other (Love triangle). When he gets on the outside someone is standing by the fence with a mask on and he realizes after the man speaks that it's his brother David who is indeed not dead like he had originally thought.

In the third book (The Burnouts) David and Will help the parents to keep the school running and David tells Will all about his time on the outside. Lucy is trying to keep out of everyone's sight since she's the one who not only killed Gates, but also got the leader of the sluts (Violent) killed as well. Hilary (the leader of the pretty ones) is out to get Lucy (they have had a feud in all the books) pushes Lucy down a set of stairs and she ends up with the burnouts (very filthy kids who huff anything they can get their hands on). Lucy finds out she is pregnant and after the fall and trauma of being pushed down the stairs looses the baby. She ends up huffing with these kids to feel better about the whole situation (actually to not feel at all). She almost gets killed by not only the saints, but Hilary as well. Hilary ends up with a gun and goes completely psycho ordering everyone in the school around to create a prom for her since she received a bloody nose and will be graduating soon (which no one else knows about). Will finds out about Lucy being pregnant and goes back into the school with a mask on to save her. David gets wind of Will going in and also goes in after Will to save them both. Hilary finds out David is back in the school and has the gangs capture Will to keep him hostage, she explains how she will kill Will if David doesn't become her prom king. The freaks leader helps sneak both Lucy and David into the prom so they can rescue Will and get rid of Hilary. Lucy, Will and David end up saving everyone in the school by tearing down one of the walls so everyone can escape. David and Lucy end up separated and Will dies. David continues to look for Lucy until he finally finds her and ends up helping her family take care of her until she is virus free.

Now this fourth book (The Giant) personally they could have just left it as a series of three, but they wrote this one anyways. I do have to say it was a nice little addition, definitely not necessary, but still was a good read. I will admit this one wasn't as fast of a read (page turner) but it still kept me on my toes wondering what's next? This whole book is about Gonzalo (one of Davids friends from the Loners) finding his lost girlfriend (Sasha also from the Loners). It explains how they first ended up together, all the mountains Gonzalo has to climb to find Sasha and how they tackle the world after being reunited.

WE MADE IT!!! Overall I think this was an amazing series and if you get the chance give it a read obviously I summarized a lot of the books.

I would love to hear your thoughts on if you read this series, what you were feeling and what you thought of my blog.

Thank you so much for reading my first blog review and I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday.

Until the next Wednesday Stay Reading Selena Torres.