Middle School

The invasion begins – but not as you’d expect. It begins with rain. Rain that carries seeds. Seeds that sprout–overnight, everywhere. These new plants take over crop fields, twine up houses, and burrow below streets. They bloom–and release toxic pollens. They bloom–and form Venus flytrap-like pods that swallow animals and people. They bloom–everywhere, unstoppable.
Or are they? Three kids on a remote island seem immune to the toxic plants. Anaya, Petra, Seth. They each have strange allergies–and yet not to these plants. What’s their secret? Can they somehow be the key to beating back this invasion? They’d better figure it out fast, because it’s starting to rain again…

The first book in a suspenseful sci-fi horror adventure trilogy that I would describe as Alien meets Little Shop of Horrors, without the ‘Feed me, Seymore.”

The first part of the story is spent establishing the three main characters; Anaya, Petra, and Seth. The story kept jumping between their three point-of-view so willy-nilly that it was difficult to keep track of who was telling the story.

This story reminds me of a certain Doctor Who episode along with other suspense sci-fi movies. There’s even the stereotypical scientist who wants to use reason to solve the problem and the stereotypical Colonel who wants to use violence and weapons and blow everything up.

It probably wasn’t a good idea to listen to this dystopian story in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. I couldn’t help noticing the similarities between how the people in the story reacted to the plant pandemic and how the people in real life reacted to the Covid-19 pandemic. The hospitals were full of the infected, everyone told to stay indoors, wearing face masks, hoarding food and medicine. Thankfully we only have to worry about catching a virus and not getting eaten by plants.

A bit of a spoiler, the story ends on a huge cliffhanger so don’t go into this book expecting everything to get solved in the end. This is just the first book in the trilogy after all.

This weeks’ Weird but True Fact about Deadly Plants

The Poison Garden in North England is a public garden filled with deadly plants.