By Eireann Corrigan
In this book, Finn and her friend Chloe have trained to look good on college applications for their entire young adult lives. When their advisor tells them it isn't enough for the best schools in the country, they gain inspiration from a recent kidnapping and stage an abduction of their own. As Chloe sits it out in a basement, Finn works her way through the next few days pretending to be clueless, distraught, unhelpful to police, family and friends; the idea being that both Finn and Chloe become more interesting to those top-notch colleges. But, not everything goes as planned as some are forced to get the short end of the stick.
When I read this book I peeked at the inside cover at the summary, which I deeply regretted. It had a little teaser which gave me the feeling of impending doom. When I got through the book to the end I realized how much I overestimated: I was expecting something along the lines of a horror book, which left me pent-up and anxious for the entire first half of it. Honestly, not much happened in the beginning. It was mostly focused on the stress Finn got from lying to everyone, and her stress just mostly made me feel stressed, which made my nervousness and anticipation worse. When the action peaked at about 3/4ths way through, I felt a lot more interested through to the end. The beginning/middle wasn't as great because it was all just about Finn and her stressful life for a few days (which were hard to count), and it got slower and boring. The book had rut-like qualities where the action should have been picking up, and the rising action with the climax along with the falling action was smushed into a small space at the end. The resolution, however, was written in an appropriate amount of space. For me, getting through the slower parts to the good stuff was rewarding because the book tied all the lose ends together into a solid finish that made me think a lot about the whole book. Only until the end, but there the entire story made sense and makes it worth reading.
In this book, Finn and her friend Chloe have trained to look good on college applications for their entire young adult lives. When their advisor tells them it isn't enough for the best schools in the country, they gain inspiration from a recent kidnapping and stage an abduction of their own. As Chloe sits it out in a basement, Finn works her way through the next few days pretending to be clueless, distraught, unhelpful to police, family and friends; the idea being that both Finn and Chloe become more interesting to those top-notch colleges. But, not everything goes as planned as some are forced to get the short end of the stick.
When I read this book I peeked at the inside cover at the summary, which I deeply regretted. It had a little teaser which gave me the feeling of impending doom. When I got through the book to the end I realized how much I overestimated: I was expecting something along the lines of a horror book, which left me pent-up and anxious for the entire first half of it. Honestly, not much happened in the beginning. It was mostly focused on the stress Finn got from lying to everyone, and her stress just mostly made me feel stressed, which made my nervousness and anticipation worse. When the action peaked at about 3/4ths way through, I felt a lot more interested through to the end. The beginning/middle wasn't as great because it was all just about Finn and her stressful life for a few days (which were hard to count), and it got slower and boring. The book had rut-like qualities where the action should have been picking up, and the rising action with the climax along with the falling action was smushed into a small space at the end. The resolution, however, was written in an appropriate amount of space. For me, getting through the slower parts to the good stuff was rewarding because the book tied all the lose ends together into a solid finish that made me think a lot about the whole book. Only until the end, but there the entire story made sense and makes it worth reading.
That's interesting how you had this feeling of impending doom while reading this one. I was reading this book "Wish" by Joseph Monninger the other day, and okay, so the book is about a kid obsessed with sharks, so maybe it's not surprising, but I had an incredible sense of doom re: his fate as I read the book. It turned out that he did not get eaten by sharks (and in the frame of this book, that may not have been the worse thing ever... long story, but that's my take on it) but at the same time things were not happily ever after.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much the writing in the flap copy affects the way we read books. This year I read The Gardener by S.A. Bodeen, which was a book with a cool concept... one entirely spoiled by the book's cover which says something to the effect of "this garden grows... people." For half the book the character didn't know what was going on, but thanks to the cover, I did. Grr!
I completely agree. I try not to read the cover, but it's a nervous twitch... a bad habit of mine. Oftentimes, the book is completely spoiled by the cover.
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