Review: An interesting premise... But falls flat.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 11, 2011
When I started this book I was quite taken aback with the way it was written- I personally feel that the writing was quite choppy and awkward, almost to the point of sounding robotic (ie. "There is not a class on her schedule this semester that she likes. Next up, second period Chem which she understands not at all." pg. 10)- as such, I had a very difficult time connecting to everything that was occurring within it.Furthermore, I feel that the book was unnecessarily convoluted- there were countless times while reading the book that I set it down so that I could process everything that was going on (and after every time I did this I was still no closer to understanding the book) and there were countless times while reading the book that I had to pull up the dictionary feature on my Kindle so that I could understand what exactly the author was trying to say- it almost felt like the author used a thesaurus to change every couple of words in the story to make it sound more intelligent (ie. "The dark second-floor chem lab is soporific as always, Litwack spacing out behind his desk, mug of coffee well-laced wuth vodka. As the class practices titration Anna can see more than the assignment bubbling at the back table: Darren and a couple other football guys are huddling too industriously over a beaker." pg. 10).If anything the book reads more like a screenplay than an actual book, which I suppose makes sense as the author "made an interesting living writing novel adaptations and original suspense and horror scripts for numerous Hollywood studios (Sony, Fox, Disney, Miramax), for producers such as Michael Bay, David Heyman, Laura Ziskin and Neal Moritz" [...]. After reading the book I am left feeling similar to how I did after watching films such as "Inception" and "Shutter Island"- basically I am confused beyond belief, but know that what I just experienced is very likely a work of genius.All in all, I think that this is one of the rare cases where, if this book were to be made into a film, the film would actually be better than the book. While I personally did not enjoy the book as much as I had hoped to, I can see fans of thrillers eating it up and asking for seconds.Rating: 2.5/5