Review by Booklist Review
It's the end of the world, and Sophie needs to find her twin brother. A million things could go wrong, but she owes it to Noah after unintentionally outing him to their parents. Sharing similarities with Stephen's King's The Stand and Chuck Wendig's Wanderers, Leede's American Rapture (following Maeve Fly, 2023) follows a sheltered teen girl raised in a fundamentalist Catholic household as she roams the Midwest with a ragtag team of survivors in the thick of a deadly pandemic. The Human Parasyphilian virus, colloquially known as Sylvia, attacks the Sylvian fissure in the brain, making the infected act out destructive, perverse desires, while leaving a trail of victims in its wake. Sixteen-year-old Sophie must now peel away layers of indoctrination in order to hang on to hope and face a reality that clashes with her upbringing. Full of action, gore, and heartbreak, this book will appease postapocalyptic-fiction fans looking for a fresh title to scratch the horror itch.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Leede (Maeve Fly) masterfully eases readers into a taut horror plot in her standout sophomore outing, which works both as an nail-biting apocalyptic tale and as an empathetic look at the impact of being raised in a harshly restrictive environment. Sophie and her twin, Noah, grew up in Wisconsin, raised by devout Catholics who frightened the children when they were only five by telling them that "God, Jesus, demons, and the Devil are always watching they all know our every thought." Their parents' chance discovery that Noah has a magazine with a cover photo of two men kissing, leads to his being banished to "a spiritual sanctuary for families afflicted with challenged children," and Sophie blames herself for not protecting him. As Sophie matures, she finds herself mocked by schoolmates for her sexual naivete. Meanwhile, a deadly virus that drastically increases the libidos of those infected spreads to the Midwest from the Northeast, and after Sophie gets dramatic proof that it has reached her small town, she must embark on a desperate flight for survival. Leede does a fantastic job putting readers in the head of her wonderfully flawed and recognizably human lead. Add in plenty of page-turning suspense, and this proves hard to put down. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Sophie leads a life strictly regulated by her parents and the Catholic Church, both of which try to keep her as far as possible from the secular world and its sinful temptations. As a result, she is unaware of a virus tearing across the United States that causes those who contract it to suffer flu-like symptoms before they succumb to a vicious, feral lust. She takes off with strangers, who become her found family, to attempt to find her brother while avoiding both the illness and the violence that has engulfed the country. In this book, Leede combines an end-of-the-world story with a new twist on zombies. Sophie is thrust into a ferociously brutal world she was ill-prepared to manage even before the pandemic, but she navigates loss and her growing awareness of the religious trauma she has endured while learning to challenge the truths she's been afraid to question. Featuring younger people fighting for survival, as in Alden Bell's The Reapers Are the Angels, this novel shares the kind of violent zombie apocalypse presented in Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt. VERDICT Those who loved Leede's style in her debut, Maeve Fly, will enjoy this grimly complicated story.--Lila Denning
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