Book Description:
Welcome to Gardnerville.
Welcome to Gardnerville.
A place
where no one gets sick. And no one ever dies.
Except...
There’s a
price to pay for paradise. Every fourth year, the strange power that fuels the
town exacts its payment by infecting teens with deadly urges. In a normal year
in Gardnerville, teens might stop talking to their best friends. In a fourth
year, they’d kill them.
Four years
ago, Skylar’s sister, Piper, was locked away after leading sixteen of her
classmates to a watery grave. Since then, Skylar has lived in a numb haze,
struggling to forget her past and dull the pain of losing her sister. But the
secrets and memories Piper left behind keep taunting Skylar—whispering that the
only way to get her sister back is to stop Gardnerville’s murderous cycle once
and for all.
My Thoughts:
I loved
this: “I’d rather be forgotten than remembered the wrong way.”
Originally,
I gave it 3.5 stars, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it
deserved more, 4 stars. It took me a little
bit to get into this story but once I did, I found myself liking it. The story was peculiar (creepy at times) and captivating
all the way through. Overall, I give it 4
stars. I usually hate first person
narrative style and flash backs, but I love how the author put this
together. Like I said: captivating. The story bounces back and forth between the
past and present, with the chapters dealing with the past given 80’s song
titles (which I loved). It is completely original, unlike anything I
have ever read or heard about (maybe I live under a rock, but I don’t think so?).
The story
unravels through glimpses into the past, in which you learn about the less
pleasant pieces of history of the town.
Although it is confusing at times and nothing makes sense in the
beginning, through these little snippets, you start to understand the
background of the town and its citizens.
It all
begins in a fourth year, with our protagonist, Skylar (aka Sky), watching her
sister, Piper, lead half of her high school (the kids are all sort of hypnotized)
across the railroad trestle bridge. Sky
tries to wake the followers, but is unsuccessful. When Piper hears the train coming, she begins to wake all of the kids by touching them to get them to jump off of the trestle. From Sky’s perspective, it seems as though
they think that they can fly, but wake from their reverie at the last moment to
realize that they are about to land in the salt spring, painfully. Piper starts to run from the train,
grinning. She will outrun it or die
trying.
Sky starts
taking these little purple pills (made from forget-me-nots) that allow her to
fall into a kind of fog and forget her current situation. Piper is in the reformatory (where all the fourth years that have snapped go) and Sky just doesn't know what
to do, basically. So she falls into drug
use and selling her body, so to speak, to a boy that works at the reformatory to get information on Piper. Eventually, she starts to put the
pieces together by quitting the pills and listening to the tapes that she and
Piper made and you start to see the big picture at the same time she does. I really liked that. I found myself rooting for her, hoping that
she would defeat her demons.
Character’s
worth mentioning:
Elton, who
uses Sky’s skill of reading people’s secrets to try to find out when there
might be another incident. Elton wants
to try to stop all the fourth year madness before it even begins and "cure" the town. In exchange for Sky’s cooperation, Elton
gives her the purple pills.
-and-
Foote, who is
a sort of henchman (though that sounds far too sinister) for Elton, but he is a
good guy. You don’t really know anything
about him in the beginning, but he’s not the typical “I’m mysterious, so I’ll
be a jerk” guy. The more I found out
about him, the more I liked him. He and
Sky end up falling for each other slowly, with Sky taking a little longer to
realize her feelings are genuine. It wasn't just a sappy love story inserted into a bigger story. It didn't detract from the story at all, so I
liked it. You do, however, get the
feeling from their first interaction that they are connected more than they
originally think. You would be correct,
by the way.
When you
come to the end, it’s not a plot twist.
It’s the solving of a mystery, and it’s wonderfully done. You couldn't ask for a better ending.
So, I know
this is a bad review, but I honestly can’t figure out how to write how I feel
about this book, so here are some adjectives to compensate: captivating, confusing, unique, and
creepy.
Sexual Content: Mild to Moderate (I can't remember any specific scenes, but I do remember insinuation.)
Language: Heavy
Violence: Moderate to Heavy
Drugs/Alcohol: Heavy
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