Finished "The Troop" by Nick Cutter, wanting to discuss somethings.

Hey everyone! I just finished "The Troop" about a week ago and now that I've had some time to digest the story I was hoping to discuss somethings.

First off, I loved the book. It was the first novel I actually finished in years. The characters were well written, Shelley was immediately creepy from the get go, Tim was so into nature that a tree sprouted from his head (R.I.P Tim). The atmosphere was great, the tension didn't come from the setting but the trust between the characters. There was some points I immediately clued in on and others I didn't expect. Which leads me into the first thing I want to discuss...favorite character.

So I'm going to start by saying the death of my favorite character hit me hard. So hard it made me debate if this genre is something I can handle so please let me know if I'm the only one who was hit hard over their favorite character's death or if I'm just an emotional rookie horror reader. Anyway Ephraim for me was originally a character i wrote off as a smartass troublemaker. It wasn't until the scene with him and Kent in the rain that I realized he was my favorite. The more I read the more I felt like he was the only one of the kids who was aware of how people saw him, how aware he was of his own anger and how hard he tried to manage it, only for it to be unacknowledged by almost everyone. So when I read the part where he poured the gasoline over himself and pulled his lighter out, I broke. The kid had it rough and was killed off by a psychopathic creep. Didn't get to say goodbye to his best friend. Was buried on the island (will come back to this), and just felt hate for Shelley for causing it. That being said the entire arc was greatly written. His outward persona, the slow paranoia of being infected and everything felt natural. His altered state made him easier to persuade while the conflicting view with Max only isolated his connection to reality.

Second topic would be a detail near the end of the book about the kids being accounted for. We know from the book Kent was never found but the others were accounted for. Do anyone think that Max after being pulled from the water and quarantined informed the military of the bodies of Shelley and Ephraim since Kent was already missing and Newt was there with him when he was shot. We also know they napalmed the island multiple times and shocked the water, so I wanna say they collected all the bodies (adults and kids) and cremated them for sanitation reasons but also to give the families closure. But Im interested in hearing your thoughts on that!

Lastly because this ended up being longer than I expected it to be, the worms did leave a few questions that either I missed details on or didnt out 2 and 2 together. I get the separate roles, but I can't place which role the worms that come out of Tim's corpse in the cabin and Shelley's corpse in the cave that are like sentry/guardian that hone in on sound and/or movement and the one from the beginning that strangled it's host. And their lifespan seemed longer than what the experiment log made it out to be. I want to attribute this to larger prey = longer lifespan but that seems counter intuitive because the ceaseless hunger they instill. So im just puzzled on what is probably an obvious answer lol

If you read this all the way through thank you! I was excited to finish a book and even more excited to try and get to discuss it I feel like I rambled a bit. Im looking forward to hear everyone's thoughts and opinions and favorite scene/character/thread :) Thank you, happy reading!