Thursday, September 25, 2008

The Adventures of You

Fabulous Terrible The Adventures of You Sophie Talbot

Told in present-tense second-person narrative, this is the story of you. If you are an orphan from South Carolina. A psychic orphan. Well, it doesn't matter--you just got a full scholarship into one of the best boarding schools in the country! Too bad someone is out to destroy you--from hacking your blackboard account so assignments are never turned in, to forging notes from your soccer coach telling you a match has been canceled, someone is out to get you.

Plus, your visions of the future are getting seriously weird.

Here's the problem: the back of the book says promises "A society sworn to uphold the founder's deepest secrets has become divided. A war for power seethes just under the campus's placid calm. And a mysterious missing book of predictions is about to change your world forever." And yes, the book will change your world, I assume in the NEXT installment because all that? Happened in the last 8 pages of the book.

This book is obviously meant to set-up the series, but that means it was slow-moving with too much explanation and all the real excitement was at the very end. While the premise sounds interesting, the pacing issues don't make me want to pick up the next in the series where things might start to get interesting. In fact, if I hadn't been reading this for review, I doubt I would have finished the book--the first hundred pages just dragged too much. Middle school readers might be more forgiving though.

Full disclosure: Book sent by publisher through The Picnic Basket.

2 comments:

tinylittlelibrarian said...

Huh - that's funny! I just ordered this book for my library system but couldn't find any reviews of it, I just knew from the cover it would get some readers. And I totally thought, because of the "you" that it was a choose-your-own-adventure type book for teen girls. There are a few of those series out there at the moment and I thought this was another clone. So thanks for setting me straight!! :)

tinylittlelibrarian said...

Um...I don't buy most of the books based on the covers, by the way, I do actually read reviews and generally act in a professional manner. :)