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Virals #5.5
Spike
The pack is back on the prowl in this Virals adventure set after the events of Terminal.
Tory and the Virals have untangled the most twisted mysteries and proven no crime is too complex for them to solve…now they just need to make it through Kit and Whitney’s wedding day. As the daughter of the groom and maid-of-honor it’s up to Tory to make sure everything goes off without a hitch. She expected to resolve last-minute wardrobe emergencies or venue issues but wherever the Virals go nefarious adversaries follow. Tory and her friends will need to stop a clever saboteur dead set on ruining the big day, whatever the cost. Featuring Tory's famous great-aunt Temperance Brennan, this exciting story shows the lengths the pack will go to when their loved ones’ lives are on the line.
Tory and the Virals have untangled the most twisted mysteries and proven no crime is too complex for them to solve…now they just need to make it through Kit and Whitney’s wedding day. As the daughter of the groom and maid-of-honor it’s up to Tory to make sure everything goes off without a hitch. She expected to resolve last-minute wardrobe emergencies or venue issues but wherever the Virals go nefarious adversaries follow. Tory and her friends will need to stop a clever saboteur dead set on ruining the big day, whatever the cost. Featuring Tory's famous great-aunt Temperance Brennan, this exciting story shows the lengths the pack will go to when their loved ones’ lives are on the line.
84 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 2, 2016
101 people are currently reading
2694 people want to read
About the author
Kathy Reichs
153 books17.4k followersKathy Reichs is a forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Quebec. She is one of only fifty forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology and is on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. A professor of anthropology at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Dr. Reichs is a native of Chicago, where she received her Ph.D. at Northwestern. She now divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal and is a frequent expert witness in criminal trials.
Awards:
Arthur Ellis Award
◊ Best First Novel (1998): Deja Dead
Awards:
Arthur Ellis Award
◊ Best First Novel (1998): Deja Dead
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
March 23, 2016
Another VIRALS instalment is sure to leave readers with a fuzzy feeling while showing off how Kathy and Brendan Reichs have mastered the art of young adult fiction. In this novella, Tory Brennan has finally met the day she doomed, her father is finally set to marry long-time girlfriend,Whitney DuBois, in the most lavish event that a Southern Belle could imagine. However, the day is fraught with issues: a missing garter, wilting flowers, and even a poorly assembled stage that almost catapults the bride and groom into the gathered audience. Luckily, the Virals are on hand to help, still able to use their heightened telepathy communication capabilities. Tory leads the way in trying to determine what or who might be behind all this, but spies something new, an errant caterer caught adding some substance to the wedding cake icing. After a struggle, they are able to detain him, but are no further ahead with a motive and mastermind. Enter Tempe Brennan, forensic master and always around for a cameo. Just as Tory helps unravel the mystery, she encounters a new one, related to her boyfriend Ben and his plans after the summer. A cute addition to the VIRALS series, sure to entertain the young adult in all of us!
Having been a long-time fan of Kathy Reichs, I joined the VIRALS train when it came to town. The stories are decent, geared for young adults/teens and fit the bill effectively. They read easily and offer a great variety of characters, offering the odd cameo by the famed Tempe, while progressing nicely. Reichs (both of them) offer a wonderful narrative and some interesting insights into this gang of innocent misfits, while curtailing the previously well-honed half-canine abilities they acquired early in the series. Of all the tales that have been presented, this was, by far, the most grounded and based in reality. A fresh approach, though it does leave the door open for many more adventures, just when I thought the series had tied itself off.
Kudos, Dr. And Mr. Reichs for this wonderful addition to the series. I am eager to see if you run with the bombshell you offered at the end of this piece or let things end with it.
Like/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
Having been a long-time fan of Kathy Reichs, I joined the VIRALS train when it came to town. The stories are decent, geared for young adults/teens and fit the bill effectively. They read easily and offer a great variety of characters, offering the odd cameo by the famed Tempe, while progressing nicely. Reichs (both of them) offer a wonderful narrative and some interesting insights into this gang of innocent misfits, while curtailing the previously well-honed half-canine abilities they acquired early in the series. Of all the tales that have been presented, this was, by far, the most grounded and based in reality. A fresh approach, though it does leave the door open for many more adventures, just when I thought the series had tied itself off.
Kudos, Dr. And Mr. Reichs for this wonderful addition to the series. I am eager to see if you run with the bombshell you offered at the end of this piece or let things end with it.
Like/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
March 25, 2016
To be honest, I expected something with a little more 'boom'. But still, it was a nice afterword for the series and I liked that the author explained Tory's blue eyes from the end of the last book. Also, the Tory/Ben bits were cute.
February 15, 2021
A fairly enjoyable epilogue to the series. Answers the most important questions about the group from book 5 with a reasonable-stakes mystery.
Writer's perspective critique: The main character of this 1st person narrative gives a play-by-play on the colors of her eyes changing while she's not looking into a reflective surface. There's no plausible way for her to know this, and the eye color was not my most pressing question as a reader looking for follow up to the last book.
I have pretty mixed feelings about this series in general. The plots are wild enough to be superhero plotlines, the team's powers make them almost werewolves (there just aren't enough werewolf books in the world, y'all), and I like mysteries, but they work for me in sections. There'll be sections that I like and sections where I need to take a break and come back, maybe because it's really close to being what I want and is frustratingly not quite there, or because something just feels off.
As I read this in 2021, I think something else that could have been done differently is the approach to Charleston high society. I think the main character makes pretty clear how uncomfortable people with that much money are to be around and how outdated she finds the rituals, but I don't remember if racism, slavery, and white supremacy are ever brought up in that context. I think the patriarchy is. I don't know how, exactly, it could have been done, but it feels off that nothing related to the history of oppression gets mentioned in this story--which is set at a high society wedding where the bride has grown up ridiculously wealthy and is insisting on lavish traditions. I think it would have been good to see any of the characters expressing that awareness. For me, I can't think of rich people in Charleston, SC without thinking of the South and white supremacy.
The superhero plotlines are just a smidge grounded to make suspension of disbelief hold at times--in a Spiderman or similar universe, sure, but in an otherwise realistic world, the odds of some of this stuff working just seem really long. The mysteries sometimes work really well and sometimes get bogged down in science exposition from the characters that comes across like lessons.
(Spoilers)
For instance, at the end of this mystery, there's a notepad where the bad guy has taken the top page, and it's pretty obvious they need to pull the "shade out what's written on the page underneath" trick, which the protagonist gets to explain to her love interest because he's old enough for college and does this mystery stuff but has, I guess, never heard of it?
Maybe I want the authors to trust their readership more. It's a series about smart kids/nerds, after all, from the point of view of a highly intelligent teen, and it's likely going to appeal to smart young people. Trust the smart young adults (and those of us who remember being smart YAs) to grasp concepts a bit more quickly, or let the characters explain things to each other using pop culture references and allusions that would make sense for their personalities. Yes, the science facts are cool, but this is a fictional narrative and not a science lesson. This is also frustrating from a plot point of view. For intelligent teens, especially in book 5, they did some stuff I would have expected them to think through better--they rushed into a lot of traps and failed at a lot of strategic planning. It was very frustrating.
The characters' personalities are another thing I think need a bit more development. I've read all five books and this novella, and these main characters don't feel concrete for me in a way that characters in other books do. Hi and Shelton still feel kind of interchangeable in a way, say, Patricia Briggs' characters--even secondary characters, like Asil and Leah--don't really. Chance and Tory have the most interesting and developed personalities.
I'm really disappointed that the series ended without Chance and Ella joining the group. I know they have a rocky history with the main crew, and I'm not sure what the ethics of that should be, but I think it'd be good for Tory to have someone around who challenges her the way Chance does, and I'm really disappointed that she never really got to have a great female friendship. The authors have left it open enough that I could see this happening in a later story, and I'd like to read a next book if it comes out--especially now that the team has their powers under better control and we've made it through the origin stage--to see if any of that happens.
Lastly, I'm not really a fan of the Tory/Ben ship and how it goes down across the series and in this book. I don't want to be to hard on Ben for accidently being manipulated by a serial killer because he wanted to impress a girl (he is a teen), but the fact it took him so long to come clean about it once he realized things had gone bad seems like a big problem to me. And in this story, he's let his girlfriend think he's going away to college so he can surprise her with the news that he's staying in town to go to a military academy. Her parents and friends already know, so she's the last one to find out, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It would have made way more sense and been better behavior for them to have decided what to do in honest conversations about what they wanted and what they were afraid of as a couple, and--given the whole "the four of us have a specific unstudied condition that could probably deteriorate at any time"--as a group of all four.
Writer's perspective critique: The main character of this 1st person narrative gives a play-by-play on the colors of her eyes changing while she's not looking into a reflective surface. There's no plausible way for her to know this, and the eye color was not my most pressing question as a reader looking for follow up to the last book.
I have pretty mixed feelings about this series in general. The plots are wild enough to be superhero plotlines, the team's powers make them almost werewolves (there just aren't enough werewolf books in the world, y'all), and I like mysteries, but they work for me in sections. There'll be sections that I like and sections where I need to take a break and come back, maybe because it's really close to being what I want and is frustratingly not quite there, or because something just feels off.
As I read this in 2021, I think something else that could have been done differently is the approach to Charleston high society. I think the main character makes pretty clear how uncomfortable people with that much money are to be around and how outdated she finds the rituals, but I don't remember if racism, slavery, and white supremacy are ever brought up in that context. I think the patriarchy is. I don't know how, exactly, it could have been done, but it feels off that nothing related to the history of oppression gets mentioned in this story--which is set at a high society wedding where the bride has grown up ridiculously wealthy and is insisting on lavish traditions. I think it would have been good to see any of the characters expressing that awareness. For me, I can't think of rich people in Charleston, SC without thinking of the South and white supremacy.
The superhero plotlines are just a smidge grounded to make suspension of disbelief hold at times--in a Spiderman or similar universe, sure, but in an otherwise realistic world, the odds of some of this stuff working just seem really long. The mysteries sometimes work really well and sometimes get bogged down in science exposition from the characters that comes across like lessons.
(Spoilers)
For instance, at the end of this mystery, there's a notepad where the bad guy has taken the top page, and it's pretty obvious they need to pull the "shade out what's written on the page underneath" trick, which the protagonist gets to explain to her love interest because he's old enough for college and does this mystery stuff but has, I guess, never heard of it?
Maybe I want the authors to trust their readership more. It's a series about smart kids/nerds, after all, from the point of view of a highly intelligent teen, and it's likely going to appeal to smart young people. Trust the smart young adults (and those of us who remember being smart YAs) to grasp concepts a bit more quickly, or let the characters explain things to each other using pop culture references and allusions that would make sense for their personalities. Yes, the science facts are cool, but this is a fictional narrative and not a science lesson. This is also frustrating from a plot point of view. For intelligent teens, especially in book 5, they did some stuff I would have expected them to think through better--they rushed into a lot of traps and failed at a lot of strategic planning. It was very frustrating.
The characters' personalities are another thing I think need a bit more development. I've read all five books and this novella, and these main characters don't feel concrete for me in a way that characters in other books do. Hi and Shelton still feel kind of interchangeable in a way, say, Patricia Briggs' characters--even secondary characters, like Asil and Leah--don't really. Chance and Tory have the most interesting and developed personalities.
I'm really disappointed that the series ended without Chance and Ella joining the group. I know they have a rocky history with the main crew, and I'm not sure what the ethics of that should be, but I think it'd be good for Tory to have someone around who challenges her the way Chance does, and I'm really disappointed that she never really got to have a great female friendship. The authors have left it open enough that I could see this happening in a later story, and I'd like to read a next book if it comes out--especially now that the team has their powers under better control and we've made it through the origin stage--to see if any of that happens.
Lastly, I'm not really a fan of the Tory/Ben ship and how it goes down across the series and in this book. I don't want to be to hard on Ben for accidently being manipulated by a serial killer because he wanted to impress a girl (he is a teen), but the fact it took him so long to come clean about it once he realized things had gone bad seems like a big problem to me. And in this story, he's let his girlfriend think he's going away to college so he can surprise her with the news that he's staying in town to go to a military academy. Her parents and friends already know, so she's the last one to find out, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It would have made way more sense and been better behavior for them to have decided what to do in honest conversations about what they wanted and what they were afraid of as a couple, and--given the whole "the four of us have a specific unstudied condition that could probably deteriorate at any time"--as a group of all four.
July 1, 2018
Smart people masquerading as idiots
Probably more of a 2.5. Stupid wedding and stupid Whitney. I don't care for Tory and Ben together and I HATE when people screw up their future plans by having to stay near their SO.
Probably more of a 2.5. Stupid wedding and stupid Whitney. I don't care for Tory and Ben together and I HATE when people screw up their future plans by having to stay near their SO.
June 4, 2017
AHHHHHHHH I STARTED CRYING AT SCHOOL. READ IN ONE SITTING. DYING FROM FEELS.
BTW Hiram, Bentoria is a FABULOUS ship name.
BTW Hiram, Bentoria is a FABULOUS ship name.
October 26, 2020
This is the perfect ending to this series. I won't spoil it but I got excited and laughed out loud a few times. But now I have SERIOUS book hangover dang it!
April 7, 2016
This was so good and so, so funny! I giggled like an idiot through the whole thing. I am not ready to say goodbye to these characters!
February 3, 2020
Tory's father Kit is getting married to his girlfriend Whitney, but when everything seems to go wrong on purpose, Tory and her friends have to save the day again. They have to catch the saboteur before somebody gets hurt and they have to prevent Whitney from finding out as long as possible.
A suprising little story with a detective-y vibe. The situation with the blue eyes does get explained, but it doesn't take the disappointment away completely. There are some cute passages in the story between Ben and Tory and those are heart-meltingly sweet and cute.
A suprising little story with a detective-y vibe. The situation with the blue eyes does get explained, but it doesn't take the disappointment away completely. There are some cute passages in the story between Ben and Tory and those are heart-meltingly sweet and cute.
July 17, 2019
Awwww. Well, if the series has to end, this short story ensures it ends on a high note. Still hoping more novels will come, though. And I’ve heard rumours of a movie. Fingers crossed!
March 24, 2016
What a fun romp back into the crazy world of the Virals. A year after they were (supposedly) cured. They are exhibiting some signs of a recurrence of their powers. It's good too, because Tori's dad is finally marrying Whitney and the pack will need all the power they can muster to save the wedding from being a complete disaster.
March 26, 2016
Rating: 4.25/5
Review coming soon!
Review coming soon!
September 21, 2020
It was a good short. It added closure and ended off better than the last book. It details what happened to the Virals after they got cured.
March 9, 2021
5*
What another great series. Its YA for those who don't know, but it reaches into sci-fi and paranormal as well. Its a blast to read. I enjoyed it so much
What another great series. Its YA for those who don't know, but it reaches into sci-fi and paranormal as well. Its a blast to read. I enjoyed it so much
October 15, 2021
I always love crashing a good wedding, watch out for pranks!
April 5, 2024
This short story was in the collected book Trace Evidence with the previous 4 short stories.
I had already read the first 4, & thankfully one of the libraries in my tiny state had bought a hardback version of Trace Evidence because the didn't buy any check outs on the Libby App for Kindle.
I read all the other full novels & short stories on Kindle
the started reading & finished read date are the same because it is a 30minute read at most
SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING
The end of the story makes me wonder if there could a 6th book at some point
I had already read the first 4, & thankfully one of the libraries in my tiny state had bought a hardback version of Trace Evidence because the didn't buy any check outs on the Libby App for Kindle.
I read all the other full novels & short stories on Kindle
the started reading & finished read date are the same because it is a 30minute read at most
SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING SPOILER WARNING
The end of the story makes me wonder if there could a 6th book at some point
January 14, 2018
It was a lot shorter than the other books, but it ties up a lot of loose ends and is very good. I liked it a lot better than the fourth book. Tory and the pack are back once again for another adventure, it's Whitney and Kit's wedding, and things just seem to be going wrong. First, all of the flowers begin to wilt, then the floorboards beneath the wedding arc fall apart. Tory suspects something sinister. Will Tory and the pack catch the wedding crasher before they pull something deadly?
August 14, 2018
Oh thank God I got an answer about the eyes. Still want to know more but that was so adorable I'm momentarily okay with being left hanging. I hope Tory and Ben get to enjoy much more time together in the coming years. Also how did I just figure out the connection between Ms. Whitney Blanche DuBois and A Streetcar Named Desire?
May 17, 2022
While this book helped give a little more closure to the amazing cliffhanger of "Terminal," I really need another book. This book was so good and I've definitely read it at least seven times already. It's a quick read with plenty to think about.
September 28, 2017
Another shorty, but very exciting. Poor Whitney! A surprise villain with sabotage on the brain...
December 4, 2017
Amusing short read.
December 19, 2017
This really wraped up this series and answered a lot of questions. It also satisfied me greatly with Bens surprise at the end!
February 27, 2018
Think this was my fave one so far!! Loved all of it! Really hoping this means there will be more!
March 11, 2018
The wedding of Tory's father, Kit, and Whitney.
June 10, 2018
Yeah, we got a bit more! I loved the wedding and all the different problems that kept almost disrupting the wedding! So great, though things don't feel finished, I wish we could have more!
August 2, 2018
I love it 💙
January 1, 2019
Liked this series a lot.
August 18, 2019
A fun novella to wrap up a couple lose ends of the series and to let everyone know that our favorite characters survive the transition back to being “normal” humans just fine.
May 9, 2020
Cute short story.
June 7, 2022
This was just the best little story to round up everything that the virals had been through!
With a final mystery they could solve, I just love their dynamic.
With a final mystery they could solve, I just love their dynamic.
November 9, 2022
I don't usually like novellas, but this one was quite good. What could go wrong at a wedding? Apparently a lot.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews