Review: Character-driven thriller
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 4, 2012
Wow, what a crazy and unique concept. A super-selective small liberal arts college receives a variety of threats from a group of students who were not accepted. Are these students already on campus? What did the school president do that was so bad? What will the big finale be? These questions and more were all running through my mind throughout most of the novel and while some were answered just over a third of the way into the book, others were not answered until the very end. I was really impressed with Flynn's ability to carry out a thriller in which the main characters were truly fleshed out people the reader actually cared about...or in Dula's case, really hated! Despite the book's frightening cover art, this novel is mostly quite light hearted in a sense, although the emotions felt by the rejected students are certainly palpable. There is a sub-plot that threw me off for a while, but as the book progressed, I saw why it was a necessary part of the story. The only criticism I have is that the chapters are WAY too long at times, but maybe that's just me. When chapters are shorter I find it much easier to get hooked into a book thinking, "Oh I'll just read one more chapter." But with some of these chapters being some 30 or more pages long, that wasn't really possible. Regardless though, it still managed to be quite a page turner most of the time.