Saint John, New Brunswick
Rattled by Lisa Harrington surely left me rattled.
I finished this book in one sitting, and after that I thought about it a lot. Itâs a book that has a really good concept, and I really enjoyed reading about it. Itâs a book that I absolutely devoured, and thatâs something that I havenât had in a while. Iâve been in a little bit of a reading slump lately, although I read a lot of books per month (which is *formerly* 2 books for Digitally Lit: Our Stories Matter, Bridge to Publishing and then my current other read), I can still forget why I love reading so much, and why I keep coming back to it time and time again. When Iâm in a reading slump, I still read I just donât enjoy it as much. It really just takes the right book to get me back into reading again.
Thereâs a lot that I like about this book, and the main reason is that it tells a really good story. I also like how the characters solved the mystery and that they werenât afraid to take risks and get their hands dirty. That being said, thereâs a lot in this book that I did find strange. The writing style was very easy to read, it was easily digestible and easy to comprehend, however I would also consider this book to be young adult fiction, so for teens 13-17 like me. It deals with slightly more mature themes like murder and blood, so Iâm not sure I would really place it at middle grade fiction which is 8-12 years. It could be at that, but I think the author wrote it for a young adult audience considering that the main character is 15.
I felt that the age range and the writing style didnât quite match.
With a young adult book thereâs a certain level of writing style that I think I expect from it, and it shouldnât really be as easy as a middle grade novel. As a reader I thought this was a bit weird. However, I will take into account that fact that this was written quite a while ago and things mightâve been different then, maybe this is what the books teens read were like. I donât know, but I felt that the writing style was for a younger audience, considering that this book is likely young adult.
Characters in this story are another thing that I want to discuss. In terms of character, I felt that the ones in this story had none. They are said to live in Halifax Nova Scotia. Halifax is a real place, and Halifax is the setting of this story. Somehow this world didnât feel lived in enough. It felt empty, it was like the entire city of Halifax revolved around these characters and this one story. Perhaps the reason was that this book is very short and building up the surrounding world wasnât really a priority, which I can understand. I felt a lack of a connection from the characters to the outside world. It really seemed that the characters were only there to move the story forward, rather than have a story about characters doing certain things.
For the longest time I debated whether or not to give this book 5 stars or 4 stars, but I ended up giving it 4 stars because of a lot of things that I found slightly lacking. I will take into account that this is the authorsâ first novel, and for that I think she did a good job. No novel is perfect, and it certainly takes a lot to publish a book into the world and have readers like me talk about it. I did think that this story had an excellent concept behind it, but the execution isnât all quite there. Personally, when I read a mystery I appreciate when clues and hints are set up beforehand, a nice little misdirect here and there, and a nice plot twist at the end. I find Lydiaâs immediate suspicion of her new neighbors predictable.
I had quite a lot to say about this book⌠if youâve made it this far you might think that I didnât enjoy it as much as Iâve rated it, but I can assure you I did. Truly I was hooked on itâs story, and I did like the end result of how everything played out.
