Reviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite

The Regression Strain by Kevin Hwang is a chilling medical thriller that turns a luxury cruise into a floating nightmare. Dr. Peter Palma boards the Paradise expecting sunburns and sprains, but an unexplainable outbreak quickly transforms the ship into a floating quarantine zone filled with madness and death. As passengers turn on one another and society unravels in close quarters, Peter must diagnose and stop a disease that seems almost sentient in its cruelty. With tight pacing, visceral horror, and sharp psychological insight, The Regression Strain explores what happens when science, instinct, and morality collide in the vacuum of survival.

Author Kevin Hwang has a keen sense of pacing and the art of the reveal, and he utilizes every moment in this tense, terrifying thriller that grips you from page one and never lets go. The premise got me hooked immediately, as any kind of seafaring story gives you that trapped feeling. Hwang blends science and suspense in this pressure cooker situation to give readers a cruise that will certainly put anyone off the water for a while! There’s depth amidst the excellent pacing and tense plot twists, too, and the development of the psychology of Peter and the others trapped on the boat offers more than just the typical thriller. The story is a dissection of fear, morality, and the façade of being civilized until the stakes are suddenly life and death. This is captured in Peter’s thoughts and the dialogue of those losing their heads around him. Overall, The Regression Strain is a claustrophobic, haunting, and razor-sharp story that I highly recommend: this is outbreak fiction at its finest.