Author: Laurel Snyder

This was another difficult book for me to read.

There are a few reasons I kept at this one: my students recommended it (and their recommendations so far have been pretty awesome) and there was enough intrigue for me to find out what it was all about in the end.

Here’s why it was difficult—I didn’t care for the main character. At all.

In fact, if the main character were to have died midway and the rest of the book turned into nothing but cooking recipes for open fires, I would’ve been fine with that. I just couldn’t find anything redeeming or anything that would make me want to care about her outcome.

But that’s just me. Maybe I’m a heartless guy. Who knows?

There are other characters to be concerned about and they were written well. I did care about their outcomes, which is why push through to the end. It was when I got to the end that my frustration hit its high point.

It just ended. No explanation, no resolution… for any of the characters… and still nothing redeeming about the main character. The whole idea of leaving it up to interpretation is fine if there’s enough depth and background information for the reader to draw their own conclusions. In this case, there wasn’t.

It’s a thrilling novel for a young reader chocked full of mystery with just enough hints of some kind of supernatural elements to keep them hooked. For me, it just fell flat.