I liked the apocalyptic feeling of a bio-horror thriller this time around for my reading versus something with zombies or vampires (though I do love both), so I checked out Swarm by Jennifer D. Lyle.

My shiny new toy turned out to be a slow burn, which I don’t mind provided the payoff is worth the wait. As someone who reads across age groups, I did feel like this story could’ve fit better for a middle grade audience rather than YA, just minus the swearing parts. 

Given that, I think if someone is looking for more gore or violence in an end of the world kind of feeling, then probably Swarm isn’t going to satisfy that kind of reader. Though, what I felt were more like blips of gore/violence could very well be the right amount for someone else. In my opinion, Swarm would definitely be okay for someone just opening the door to this. Despite how I felt about what came across as more of a PG rating for me, I thought the book was written well and flowed very nicely. All things considered, I came to think this was still a good read after I got passed my own ideas of what to expect.

Now, for the main course…

The story was told entirely from teenager, Shur Riordan’s, point of view and mostly took place at the house she lived in with her mom, twin brother, Keene, and their pre-kindergarten brother, Shawn. Shur and Keene’s teenage friends, Jenny and Nathan, were also trapped in the house with them.

At first, I was a little disappointed the story never strayed from Shur’s perspective. I thought there’d be a medical point of view in better understanding the killer butterflies, or interfectorem papilionem (their Latin name and a brief TV interview between the CDC and the press is really as close as the reader gets to anything science related), at some point versus mainly the teenagers’ theories and experiences with the new species. 

But, as I read, this single perspective restriction transformed what I’d initially felt was missing for someone like me into my feeling confined right along with Shur in not being able to see things from anyone else’s viewpoint. I ended up loving the effect this had on me, and I decided I liked this much better than any medical perspective there could’ve been because then I felt like I was right there with Shur. 

But in case being stuck in a house sounds a little boring to some potential readers, I didn’t feel like this was the case at all. Personally, I liked how mom was holed up at work and that I was left just as much in the dark and worried about her as Shur and her brothers had been. And because of mom’s absence, I liked how the teenagers were forced to come up with their own solutions whenever things went south. In this respect, I think four-year-old Shawn, or Little, definitely made the four teenagers more mature, thoughtful and braver than what they might’ve been had his very young character not existed.

But it wasn’t like things were perfect between the four young adults either because, obviously, they all had their own opinions, temperaments and personalities. But Shur’s character heightened the existing tension and unknowns from the sudden situation at hand since she was already on meds due to her anxiety, panic attacks and paranoia. On top of that, Shur wasn’t always the best at consistently taking them. 

Though, interestingly enough, I did end up feeling like there could’ve been more there somehow…

Whatever that impression was, none of what was going on stopped the little crush that bloomed between Shur and Nathan. This was more downplayed than anything though, which I thought was good because I didn’t think it stole the show from the killer butterflies at all. In fact, I enjoyed the added complications of their dynamic, especially when things ended up going downhill between them.

However, the climax of a story is kind of a big deal for me and this is where I did feel like the slow burn kind of fizzled out instead of fire working. But, of course, that could just be me and my own personality of what I tend to look forward to. Still, I very much enjoyed the humor that was peppered throughout the book. One of my favorite parts in this happened between Shur and Jenny:

“You’re such a killjoy.”

“That’s my actual job,” I say. “Killing joy. You kill monsters; I kill your buzz. It all evens out.”

Lol, that was great. 

One thing I really loved seeing was how Shur grew in the story. I thought her anxiety was a lot worse in the beginning but had improved by the end. It wasn’t gone by any means, but I still felt like Shur was going in the right direction and getting there because she seemed like a stronger, more confident person. It made me happy for her to think that her anxiety would someday be just a memory. In this regard, I can see how the killer butterflies’ abrupt appearance wasn’t entirely a bad thing where Shur was concerned.

This, in turn, made me appreciate how the author got me to feel invested in her characters as if they were real. In my little world, this is then always a good story no matter how I felt at the beginning of it. In this way, it felt like the book and I grew together, and I loved that.