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Goodreads Synopsis:
The remote terror of THE THING meets the body horror of WILDER GIRLS in this fast-paced Antarctic thriller.
Shy high school junior Riley Kowalski is spending her winter break on a research trip to Antarctica, sponsored by one of the world’s biggest tech companies. She joins five student volunteers, a company-approved chaperone, and an impartial scientist to prove that environmental plastic pollution has reached all the way to Antarctica, but what they find is something much worse… something that looks human.
Riley has anxiety–ostracized by the kids at school because of panic attacks–so when she starts to feel like something’s wrong with their expedition leader, Greta, she writes it off. But when Greta snaps and tries to kill Riley, she can’t chalk it up to an overactive imagination anymore. Worse, after watching Greta disintegrate, only to find another student with the same affliction, she realizes they haven’t been infected, they’ve been infiltrated–by something that can change its shape. And if the group isn’t careful, that something could quickly replace any of them.
Top Five Reasons to Read It Looks Like Us:
- Things-that-go-bump-in-the-night creepiness
- Brat pack meets Final Girl cast of characters
- Sleep with the lights on body horror
- Breakneck pace (with bonus dual timeline POVs)
- Jaw-dropping ending
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ½ My it looks like us Review:
Body horror, isolated setting, misfit teens? Yes, please! This fast, unsettling read is filled with things-that-go-bump-in-the-night creepiness. We meet Riley as she’s headed on the trip of a lifetime – an escape from her anxiety-filled, loner school life, and a chance to explore the isolated world of Antarctica.
The Brat Pack meets final girl (no, that’s not a spoiler) cast of characters brings their baggage and their conflicting personalities to a quickly unraveling experience in the research station of a billionaire. This book’s breakneck pace (with bonus dual timeline POVs) is engrossing and unsettling in equal measure. I loved the vivid descriptions of the mysterious affliction spreading through the research station and the growing unease Ames builds with each chapter. I gasped at the ending and slept with a light on after this one.
Thanks to TBR & Beyond Tours for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Order Your Copy of It Looks Like Us:
Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Meet Author Allison Ames:
Allyson Dahlin grew up on a farm in central New York, where she had little to do but read loads of library books and make up magical and slightly creepy stories about the woods and farm animals while pretending to be a witch/homesteader. She studied psychology in college while working as a housekeeper at a motel in Cooperstown. That job involved a lot of boring hours to think up backstories for the guests whose rooms she cleaned. A shawl left on a chair by an aging opera soprano, a stack of old baseball cards left by a Hall of Fame inductee, and the legend of a monster in the lake were all fodder for stories. It was during that time she transformed from a reader and a daydreamer to a writer.
With some writing courses and a psychology certification in hand, Allyson worked in school counseling and then at a boarding school for girls with complex trauma. Writing kept her spirits up during her intensely emotional work. Eventually, she fell into internet marketing, which meant writing for her day job as well as focusing on her novels. Her first novel, CAKE EATER, was inspired by a trip to Versailles and the realization that the circumstances of Marie Antoinette’s life could just as easily happen today.