13 Minutes

ARC Review: 13 Minutes

20:57

13 Minutes
By Sarah Pinborough

 Source: Netgalley
Release date: 18th February 2015
Genres: Young Adult, Thriller, Mystery, 

I was dead for 13 minutes. I don't remember how I ended up in the icy water but I do know this - it wasn't an accident and I wasn't suicidal. They say you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but when you're a teenage girl, it's hard to tell them apart. My friends love me, I'm sure of it. But that doesn't mean they didn't try to kill me. Does it?


I’ve read one of the author’s other books - The Death House - and I really enjoyed it, so when I saw this up for request on Netgalley, I knew I had to read it. The cover is so intriguing too, so it really caught my attention! Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed - this was a really good book, and I enjoyed it so much! I’d really recommend it to fans of thrillers, when it comes out in February next year.

There were so many plot twists, it was unreal. Every chapter, I thought things might finally settle down for a while, but nope! Each page held something as equally shocking and sinister, so I was never bored. It never went the way I thought it would, so was relentlessly entertaining, which me even more hooked. I'd recommend going in knowing as little as possible too, because then the twists are even more surprising.

I also thought the characters were really well developed. I knew from the start that we couldn’t trust anyone, but even while knowing this, I was constantly surprised on the direction all of the characters went in! I really liked Becca (the protagonist) throughout, and although she wasn’t always the ‘hero’, and the strongest, she made the right decisions, and I really cared about her story.

The ending really shocked me. I definitely wasn’t expecting that! Though, I was really happy with the way it turned out, and I’m glad we were given full closure. It made me really satisfied to finish the book - any longer and it would have felt dragged, but any shorter I would have felt that things were wrapped up too quickly. Overall, this is a really good book, that I enjoyed immensely.

4 stars

Review: The Death House

15:59

The Death House
By Sarah Pinborough

Source: Gift, e-book
Genres: Young Adult, Horror, Science Fiction, Dystopian, Romance

 Goodreads Synopsis:

 Toby's life was perfectly normal... until it was unravelled by something as simple as a blood test.

Taken from his family, Toby now lives in the Death House: an out-of-time existence far from the modern world, where he, and the others who live there, are studied by Matron and her team of nurses. They're looking for any sign of sickness. Any sign of their wards changing. Any sign that it's time to take them to the sanatorium.

No one returns from the sanatorium.

Withdrawn from his house-mates and living in his memories of the past, Toby spends his days fighting his fear. But then a new arrival in the house shatters the fragile peace, and everything changes.

Because everybody dies. It's how you choose to live that counts.

 My review:
The concept of this book struck my attention straight away - people get sent to a creepy house to get murdered? Yes please! Although this book had been described like The Fault in Our Stars, I just ignored that because I’m a very open minded person (ha ha no), and the synopsis of this book pulled me in.
I can really see the similarities to TFIOS. They were both about living and dying, and if you enjoyed TFIOS (which I didn’t), you will almost definitely enjoy The Death House (which I did).


One of the reasons why I didn’t enjoy TFIOS is because it had no plot. This book didn’t either, which was a bit annoying, although it was really short. I flew through it really quickly - it only took a few hours to read, but it stayed with me.


I disliked every character in this book. They were all so unrealistic and boring, and had no originality to them at all - they had no depth. All of the boys were typical - they all had really set ‘personalities’ and did exactly what they would do at the start and end of the book - no-one developed at all, which made the book boring.


The character who I hated the most was Clara. She was so cliche and dull, although her character was meant to be free-spirited, wild, and happy. There was no way she would actually be with someone as boring as Toby. I was bored by her because she has been done before so many times. Her character stayed the same throughout the whole book.
This book should not have been described on Goodreads as Horror, Science Fiction, and Thriller. It was mostly romance - there were barely any elements of Horror (it wasn’t scary at all), Science Fiction, or Thriller, which was really disappointing. And the romance was a bit cringey too!
The ending really made this book for me. I know, if you’ve read this book, you will be screaming what?! but I feel like it needed to be done. It fit in well with the story, and made it much more worthwhile. It had meaning, and made the book loads better. Without the ending the way it was, I would have given this book a really low rating, but with that being the last thing I read, it made me like the book much more. The ending was the thing that separated this from TFIOS.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The majority was boring, but it picked up at the end and it really gave me something to think about.

 My reaction:

My rating: