review : six

Six, Karen Tayleur (Black Dog Books)

One car. One after-party.
Six people, six points of view.
But only one outcome.

Six is quite eerie and intense. Tayleur has successfully created a true page-turner with heightened anxiety and increasing tension. After reading the atmospheric prologue, I thought I knew exactly where the story was going and it did get there eventually. But there was also a SURPRISE plot departure!

This alternate storyline (ie not the car bit) was much more interesting, but unfortunately speedily resolved in two lines at the end. I would have liked to read much more about it. Though I wasn’t 100% convinced by the way the group dealt with THE SURPRISE, nor did I fully understand certain characters’ motivations, it was definitely an excellent plot twist.

Like Megan, I didn’t understand the 'txtspk' language in the text messages half the time, though muddled through and got the gist.

We don’t learn a lot about the characters beyond the superficial and they do seem to slot into specific ‘Breakfast Club’-esque moulds: the jock, the princess, the weirdo. The scene at Virginia’s house served no real purpose but to get them into the Woods, thus to discover the thing that the book revolves around. But it could have been used better to give us a better understanding of the characters. There were elements that fleshed out their situations, such as Poppy’s slightly-odd stepfather, Virginia’s dad being in politics and even Sarah’s family, but mostly it goes nowhere. However, in spite of being on the one-dimensional side, the characters are kind of sweet and interesting and some of their dialogue and exchanges were funny. The voices are also convincingly teenage.

I think that teenagers will really enjoy this one, really get on board with the ending and be very moved by it. I certainly have many customers who will ADORE it. But I don’t think that Six ultimately stands up alongside books like Paper Towns (John Green), Game as Ned (Tim Pegler) or Checkers (John Marsden) that also deal with horrifying events. (err. and this book nowhere near as disturbing as Checkers. Six is appropriate for around 13+)

But all this has got me thinking about the different kinds of YA. More on that later...