tbr
received from www.bookmooch.com

This book starts off fast, wasting no time with detailed introductions. This does result in a bit of confusion at the beginning, but not to worry, it's all cleared up through the rest of the book. It's a real roller coaster ride (pun not really intended ;P) of a book, suspenseful and thrillingly spooky in all the right places. In terms of characters, some of them are really compelling, while others are left slightly flat. Unfortunately, one of those flat ones, in my opinion, was the main character, which made it a less interesting read. I was very glad to see two brothers so close in age as the main characters, I don't think we see enough brothers in contemporary YA fiction, and I'm glad someone out there is writing YA that is appealing to boys. Shusterman has quite the imagination, and he makes up in imagination what he sometimes lacks in the writing itself. The ending was a bit predictable and felt a bit like one of those "it was all a dream" scenarios, although it wasn't quite that drastically bad. Overall, cool premise, neat delivery, but it could have used just a little bit of tweaking here and there.

Rating: 4/5

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