Review: A Nonstop Thrill Ride
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 12, 2014
Brothers, Bullies and Bad Guys throws the reader into what might look like a familiar world at first: running home from school, watching out for the creepy dude across the park who might or might not be staring at you, getting picked on by your brother. However, it quickly becomes apparent that not all is normal, as soon as the bad guys show up in the middle of the night to abduct Chris and Michael’s mother and father, parents who they haven’t seen much as they work in some kind of top secret lab.By brilliance and a bit of luck, Michael and Chris manage to make it out of the house with just enough information to set them on the trail to where their parents are being held.There’s quite a lot to like about this book, starting with the unpredictable nature of the adventure plot. It unfolds in a cinematic way that’s interesting, and the misadventures of the brothers are good for a laugh. The second part I really enjoyed was the characters of Chris and Michael. Their bravery and skill should hopefully empower young people to read more books, develop more skills, and be nice to their peers.The writing, throughout the thriller portions of the book, was very effective. I caught myself thinking of the movie Armageddon, where it seems everything that can possibly go wrong ends up going wrong.For all that, the boys are still boys, and make mistakes along their path, which is a failing a lot of young adult authors have when portraying young characters. It’s easy to see the end, and see the steps necessary to take in order to get to the end, but children don’t think of the same stuff. They forget things. They fail to plan for all contingencies. That was a part of B, B, and BG which made it more effective.Perhaps it’s that I’m not much of a mystery reader or writer, but I began to get frustrated part way through the book that there wasn’t any opportunity to find out what the devil was going on. There may or may not have been opportunities for the boys to figure some of these answers out as they went (it didn’t seem there was) but they also didn’t speculate much, they didn’t spin wild theories about what they were going to find when they got there, and given how little they knew about their parents, spinning wild possibilities would have been a good way to slow down the relentless sprint of the plot and give the reader a bit of a breather.The description was extremely light in a lot of places, making me feel a bit confused as to what was going on, and to whom. This was especially true of the scene with the girl in the corner store (where was Michael while this was going on?)I was told that this book was to be marketed for ‘reluctant readers’ which made a lot of the author’s choices make sense. However, the swearing makes me wonder if the books fits the YA genre.Overall I liked this adventure, and I’m interested to see how the author might develop it into a series.4 stars.