Series or Stand-alone:
Stand Alone
How I got it:
As part of a Book Blog Tour hosted by Thomas Nelson Fiction, organized by YA Bound
Pages: 330
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc.How I got it:
As part of a Book Blog Tour hosted by Thomas Nelson Fiction, organized by YA Bound
Pages: 330
Genre: Young Adult / Adventure / Fantasy?
First Published: May 1, 2011
First Lines: “You see that dead guy by the side of the road? Yeah, the one lying in a pool of his own blood with his face all messed up and his clothes all torn and dirty. That's me Sam Hopkins.”
Buy it from: Amazon
Barnes & Noble
The GIST (From Goodreads):
What I
appreciated the most was the way that Klavan portrayed mental illness. I always
wanted to see a character what a severe mental illness, especially one like
schizophrenia, would be like in a Young Adult fantasy novel. Oh and by the way,
another aspect I really liked: You don’t know, even by the end, whether this is
fantasy or a regular adventure novel. It’s all up to interpretation.
"You probably want to
hear about Jennifer and the demons and how I played chicken with a
freight train and—oh yeah—the weird murder and how I found out about
it—you're definitely going to want to hear about that. But first, I have
to tell you about the stupidest thing I ever did . . ."
Sam Hopkins is bored with his status as a preacher's kid. So when a group of guys notorious for being in trouble offers him friendship, he accepts. Before long, he has several new skills—including hot-wiring cars.
At school, there's an eccentric loner named Jennifer. When Sam defends her from being bullied, she begins to seek him out as her only friend. Her ramblings often seem illogical . . . but then start to contain grains of truth. One leads Sam to discover that one of his new friends has been killed. And then she tells him, "I'm looking for the devil." Sam doesn't know what that means, but he knows it's a matter of life and death that he figure it out.
Everyone else thinks Jennifer is suffering from schizophrenia. But Sam is starting to wonder if there could be something prophetic in her words. Discovering the truth is going to be both crazy and dangerous.
Sam Hopkins is bored with his status as a preacher's kid. So when a group of guys notorious for being in trouble offers him friendship, he accepts. Before long, he has several new skills—including hot-wiring cars.
At school, there's an eccentric loner named Jennifer. When Sam defends her from being bullied, she begins to seek him out as her only friend. Her ramblings often seem illogical . . . but then start to contain grains of truth. One leads Sam to discover that one of his new friends has been killed. And then she tells him, "I'm looking for the devil." Sam doesn't know what that means, but he knows it's a matter of life and death that he figure it out.
Everyone else thinks Jennifer is suffering from schizophrenia. But Sam is starting to wonder if there could be something prophetic in her words. Discovering the truth is going to be both crazy and dangerous.
OPINION:*
Sam
Hopkins is not the brightest, most athletic or over-all together kid. He’s the PK (preacher’s kid) and has to live
up to a certain standard due to that fact. Being a PK means that other kids at
school act overly polite, the girl he likes never gives him her easy smile, and
everything he does wrong will reflect poorly on his father. So when Sam is
practicing to join the all-star track team by himself- out in the middle of nowhere-
and he meets the “bad” kids at school who ask him to be their friend, he thinks,
maybe this is the way to change his reputation. How else do you break away from
the stigma of being a PK?
Sam may
not be anything amazing in definable respects but by the end of the novel, I
saw- and you will probably too- him as one of the most interesting, courageous
and unselfish characters you ever read. Sam doesn’t really want to be a bad kid;
he just wants to not be the good kid.
You think all he cares about is what people think of him until no one believes
a word he says and he looks crazy, then you really see what this kid is made
of. And that’s some tough stuff.
The
beginning of the novel starts out in Jennifer’s POV, the other main character.
Jennifer is seeing visions of demons in her home hallway and you wonder if you
were reading the same book since most chapters after that are about Sam. But as
their stories collide, the mystery deepens about Jennifer and what’s going on
in their little town.
However, my rating of this is not.
Lately I’ve been having a hard time reading a novel in one sitting. THIS WAS
NOT THE CASE. I couldn’t put this book down because the action was constant and
the writing was so smooth. I cannot say better things about this book.
OVERALL:
I could not recommend this book more. It was intriguing and simulating all the way until the end. I'm still thinking about this book.----10/10
To follow the rest of the tour and have a chance to win a copy of Crazy Dangerous click here
*My opinion was not affected by the fact I received this book through a tour or for free.
