The premise of this book sounds great: “If you knew the truth about the future, would you try to change it?”
In a prestigious school on New York’s Upper East Side, twins Skye (Blue) and Red find themselves drawn into a secret society, whose members can travel through a portal into the future. Through this, they discover that rumours about a global disaster are true, and that most of humankind is going to be wiped out.
I wanted to enjoy this book. It had the potential to be an exciting, fun thriller. But, quite simply, the writing is too bad to pull it off. It takes far too long to get going, as Reilly is so invested in the lives of the elite at the school that he forgets about actually moving the plot along. The characters are mostly one-dimensional, and the relationship between the twins (which turns out to be crucial to the plot) is almost non-existent. This meant that I didn’t care about or believe in the final part of the book.
There were also some moments that made me cringe. A comment about a girl being bullied because she didn’t wax personal areas (although Reilly does not shy away from using cruder language) is not acceptable in a book for young people, especially when the criticism (if not the bullying) is condoned. There is also a lot of stigmatising of mental illness: in the later parts of the books, people with mental illnesses are described almost as animals.
However, I will admit that the third quarter of the book was exciting. Once I got past the tedium of the debutante balls, I did want to finish the book. However, if I hadn’t been reading it to review, I would have given up after the first few chapters.
The book may go down well with many teenagers – it won’t stand up to a second reading, but as a bit of mindless escapism it could work well.
In a prestigious school on New York’s Upper East Side, twins Skye (Blue) and Red find themselves drawn into a secret society, whose members can travel through a portal into the future. Through this, they discover that rumours about a global disaster are true, and that most of humankind is going to be wiped out.
I wanted to enjoy this book. It had the potential to be an exciting, fun thriller. But, quite simply, the writing is too bad to pull it off. It takes far too long to get going, as Reilly is so invested in the lives of the elite at the school that he forgets about actually moving the plot along. The characters are mostly one-dimensional, and the relationship between the twins (which turns out to be crucial to the plot) is almost non-existent. This meant that I didn’t care about or believe in the final part of the book.
There were also some moments that made me cringe. A comment about a girl being bullied because she didn’t wax personal areas (although Reilly does not shy away from using cruder language) is not acceptable in a book for young people, especially when the criticism (if not the bullying) is condoned. There is also a lot of stigmatising of mental illness: in the later parts of the books, people with mental illnesses are described almost as animals.
However, I will admit that the third quarter of the book was exciting. Once I got past the tedium of the debutante balls, I did want to finish the book. However, if I hadn’t been reading it to review, I would have given up after the first few chapters.
The book may go down well with many teenagers – it won’t stand up to a second reading, but as a bit of mindless escapism it could work well.