This is a book featuring two 15-year-old boys who are best friends. Robby is gay. Austin is confused. Shann, the girl next door, is Austin’s love interest. While all that is going on, the world is ending.

    Andrew Smith’s apocalypse is set in Ealing, Iowa, where a now-dead scientist’s mad experiments gain new life when thugs* steal and drop a ball of glowing liquid that feeds on spilled blood and creates 6-foot-tall killer mantises*.

    Robby and Austin discover an underground bunker from the ’70s that unlocks a lot of secrets about these “unstoppable soldiers,” as the mantises are called.

    An ever-growing plague* of giant, flesh-hungry insects is bad enough, but Austin is also up to his eyeballs* in sexual confusion* — is he in love with Robby or his girlfriend, Shann?

    Trying to find out about the truth of his history, Austin narrates* the events of the apocalypse mixed with a detailed account of the “connections that spiderweb through time and place,” leading from his great-great-great-grandfather Andrzej in Poland to Shann’s lucky discovery of an apocalypse-proof bunker in her new backyard.

    The strength of the novel lies in its plot. Readers will get caught up in the action as humans go against the green beasties. But the characterization and voice are great, too. First-person Austin really gets you inside the head of a confused boy who has strong feelings for both his best friend and his girlfriend.

    Author Smith is up to his old tricks, delivering a terrifying sci-fi treat, a likable punk* of a narrator, and a sucker punch* ending that satisfyingly resolves everything and nothing in the same breath.

    The book is available at domestic online retailer jd.com.

    (SD-Agencies)