Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer (review)

Wa-bam! Followed by an enormous splatter of brains, guts, and gore. This is how pre-calc begins for seventeen-year-old Mara one beautiful September morning when classmate Katelyn Ogden suddenly explodes. When other students subsequently combust, the town panics and the Feds, along with a parade of media, swoop in to figure out what is suddenly making the seniors—and only the seniors—of Covington High blow up. Eventually, though interest fades, the quarantine is lifted, the media moves on, but kids keep blowing up. Unsurprisingly, the survivors ignore their parents, drink, have sex, and fall in love (all of which Mara does with aplomb) with the threat of imminent death hanging over their heads. By the middle of the book, Starmer has made it very clear that this will be no plucky-girl-as-the-savior book; Mara is no hero, she doesn’t want to be, and she is neither smart enough nor brave enough to do so. She’s got a wicked wit, though, and her snappy, humorous narration keeps the pace running along, while the sudden deaths of her classmates, including her boyfriend, are effectively jarring, bringing the events into sharp relief as the emotional (and physical) catastrophes they truly are. Savvy readers will see Mara cycle and recycle through the stages of grief, and the book moves from dark humor to a more serious contemplation of loss, mortality, and survivor’s guilt.