Title: The Little WoodsPublisher: Schwartz & Wade
Publication Date: July 10th, 2012
Page Count: 336
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Audience: Young Adult
Source: bought....
Rating: 2 I'd give this book an awkward hug...and stick a "kick me" sign on its back
Summary from Goodreads: Are the woods behind St. Bede's Academy really haunted, or does bad stuff just happen there? When Calista Wood, a new student, arrives midway through her junior year, St. Bede's feels like a normal school . . . until she discovers that a girl had disappeared a couple of months earlier. Some kids think she ran away, others think she was murdered, but it's only when Cally starts digging around that she finds the startling truth.
Watch as Cally enters a world of privilege, weekend-long parties, high school romances, and . . . well-kept secrets. This page-turner will appeal to teens looking for a fast-paced thriller. Written in a voice at once gripping and crystal clear, debut novelist, McCormick Templeman, will take readers on a twisting and turning journey as only a "new girl" can experience.
My thoughts: I really did not care for this book. I read it for my YA book club and…if it hadn’t been a book club pick, I would have given up at less than 50 pages in. The writing style annoyed me, particularly the fact that the narrator’s dialogue is completely inconsistent with the language used in the narrative (which consists of about a million SAT words, while her speech uses excessive amounts of “like” used as a filler word..). I usually keep post-its at places in a book where I especially like the writing…In this book, I placed more than 20 in the first 200 pages and all were complaints about the writing. Not a good sign.
I didn’t particularly care for any of the characters. They
all felt very flat and underdeveloped to me, even our narrator whose motives I
was never sure about aside from sleuthing around to solve the mystery of her sister’s
murder as well as another campus mystery. The relationships also seemed off,
particularly between Cally (our narrator) and her “friends” a.k.a. her roommate
& gang; Cally, Sophie, and Jack; and Cally and Alex. So Cally’s little gang
are pretty much your typical “mean girls” and are super rich. Cally and Sophie
turn out to be besties overnight. I won’t even get into Jack.
I must admit, I didn’t figure out the mystery, and the
writing did get better in the last 100 pages, but I found the end anticlimactic and, for me, it lacked any redeemable qualities other than not having a horrid ending. I was really disappointed that I didn’t like this book more. I had high hopes
for it, but alas, not for me. I really wouldn’t recommend it, but perhaps
someone else can overlook the flaws that I found.
Oh, what a bummer. And this cover is so pretty. Love an honest review!
ReplyDeleteI loved the cover! But the story definitely did not live up to it for me. Thanks, Asheley!
DeleteThanks, Heidi! Good luck & maybe you'll like it more than I did. :)
ReplyDelete