Please can all of you reading this take a few moments to appreciate the genuine pain that I am going through to write this review. It's genuinely painful. Why? Because first off, this is the first review I've written where the book is unfinished where I can't read anymore. Second, I have nothing but bad things to say. I'm so sorry Sophia Bennett if you're reading this, but this is what I thought and so here we go anyway.
So, Peta Jones' Dad is dead. Apparently, anyway. She's not convinced he really has died, even though she's got proof in the form of ashes that came from Iraq. But then she gets a mysterious phone call, and begins on a journey to a Mediterranean island to try and find her Dad who she still believes is alive.
I was handed this book back in October 2014, started reading it in November, wasn't really too impressed with it so I left it. I picked it up again and read a few more pages in February 2015. I then decided that I really didn't like this book. (Really, what gave it away?)
My first 'bad' is that I did not find the plot of this book interesting whatsoever. People like Julia Eccleshare disagree with me, which makes me wonder if I'm just wrong full stop. But the whole 'Dad going missing, think he's dead, PLOT TWIST he's still alive!' kind of story doesn't really interest me, but when reading this one, with an open mind by the way, I just couldn't read it.
Then the character name. Peta? I've heard of Peeta (from a dystopia novel you might have read?) but this is Peta, like the animal protection charity. I'm not quite sure I would have drifted toward this name as easily as Sophia Bennett did, but it's your character, do what you want with it.
This kind of 'running away thing' has been drawn out to the end of it's life. You've got this, 'A Boy Called Hope' by Lara Williamson, 'Paper Towns' by John Green has this concept in it with Margo, I'm going down the same route I went down with dystopia. (Don't even get me started on dystopia).
A question you might be screaming at your computer monitor right now is, "Well then, what would you have wanted in this book?" And to be honest, an air of mystique. I know it sounds cheesy or cliché even, but the sheer fact it's just her Dad that goes missing then is found again by his doting daughter is just boring, frankly. Could there have been a mysterious edge to this book? I'd have liked to see that.
However, let it not be said that I'm finally pleased to see a YA novel that doesn't have that fairytale fantasy love that I hate. In that article I wrote on that topic, I also said that I was bored of just YA books crossing a line between love and lust. And unless there's something really creepy going on between father and daughter in this book, that was quite a sight for sore eyes.
So, not a book for me. Julia Eccleshare, maybe. Terri Terry, maybe. But I guess it just boils down to the fact this isn't a book I liked and it isn't a book I'd recommend. It just wasn't for me.
• Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop.
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