Soul Beach by Kate Harrison
Dec. 2nd, 2011 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Welcome to Soul Beach.
People are dying to get here.
www.soulbeach.org.
When Alice Forster receives an email from her dead sister it seems like a sick practical joke. Then an invitation arrives to the virtual world of Soul Beach, an online paradise of sun, sea and sand where Alice can finally talk to her sister again.
But why is Soul Beach only inhabited by the young, the beautiful and the dead? Who really murdered Megan Forster? And could Alice be next?
Alice Forster’s older sister, Megan, was a singer made famous by an X-Factor style contest. When she’s murdered, Alice and her parents are devastated – their grief playing out in the public eye. But one day she gets an email from someone purporting to be her dead sister, inviting her to a website called Soulbeach where Alice finds an on-line paradise of sun, sea and sand populated by gorgeous avatars of young people who died young and have unfinished business.
At first Alice is happy to be able to speak to her sister but Megan doesn’t know who murdered her, even though her boyfriend Tim is the number one suspect. Worse, as time goes on, it becomes apparent that Soulbeach isn’t the idea that it appears to be and not everyone wants to be there. Alice must find a way to help her sister and Megan’s friends David and Triti, even though doing so means that she risks losing them forever …
Kate Harrison’s first YA novel is billed as a thriller and dark romance but for me it failed on both counts.
Limbo as an on-line site is a good idea and I enjoyed the way Harrison slowly picks away at the perfection. My favourite scenes were between Alice and Sam, a kind of manager who monitors the beach for the unseen management and explains how things work. However almost half the book consists of Alice finding out about Soul Beach and then wondering whether it’s real and what it means, which slows the pace.
My big issue though is that you don’t find out who killed Megan in this book. It seems to be a trilogy arc storyline and I felt cheated by it, not least because there are only 4 suspects and the use of chapters from the killer’s POV makes it fairly obvious who it is. Instead the final quarter sees Alice try to help Triti in a rushed storyline about anorexia and on-line bullying that never really touched me. The romance between Alice and David likewise doesn’t emerge until the final quarter and there wasn’t enough contact between them for me to believe it and I didn’t really get around the idea of love between an avatar and human via a computer terminal.
In conclusion although I liked the underlying idea, the execution didn’t do it for me and I’m not sure I’ll be reading on.
The Verdict:
Kate Harrison’s first YA novel has a great idea by conceiving limbo as a website but the execution didn’t work for me, mainly because the book’s hook is a murder mystery but you don’t find out who the killer is and Alice isn’t really put in jeopardy in the storyline. Instead the final quarter’s given over to a rushed storyline involving one of Megan’s friends and the romance between Alice and David, an inhabitant of Soul Beach, never convinced me. As such, I’m not sure I’ll be reading on.
SOUL BEACH was released in the UK on 1st September 2011. Thanks to Orion for the ARC of this book.
People are dying to get here.
www.soulbeach.org.
When Alice Forster receives an email from her dead sister it seems like a sick practical joke. Then an invitation arrives to the virtual world of Soul Beach, an online paradise of sun, sea and sand where Alice can finally talk to her sister again.
But why is Soul Beach only inhabited by the young, the beautiful and the dead? Who really murdered Megan Forster? And could Alice be next?
Alice Forster’s older sister, Megan, was a singer made famous by an X-Factor style contest. When she’s murdered, Alice and her parents are devastated – their grief playing out in the public eye. But one day she gets an email from someone purporting to be her dead sister, inviting her to a website called Soulbeach where Alice finds an on-line paradise of sun, sea and sand populated by gorgeous avatars of young people who died young and have unfinished business.
At first Alice is happy to be able to speak to her sister but Megan doesn’t know who murdered her, even though her boyfriend Tim is the number one suspect. Worse, as time goes on, it becomes apparent that Soulbeach isn’t the idea that it appears to be and not everyone wants to be there. Alice must find a way to help her sister and Megan’s friends David and Triti, even though doing so means that she risks losing them forever …
Kate Harrison’s first YA novel is billed as a thriller and dark romance but for me it failed on both counts.
Limbo as an on-line site is a good idea and I enjoyed the way Harrison slowly picks away at the perfection. My favourite scenes were between Alice and Sam, a kind of manager who monitors the beach for the unseen management and explains how things work. However almost half the book consists of Alice finding out about Soul Beach and then wondering whether it’s real and what it means, which slows the pace.
My big issue though is that you don’t find out who killed Megan in this book. It seems to be a trilogy arc storyline and I felt cheated by it, not least because there are only 4 suspects and the use of chapters from the killer’s POV makes it fairly obvious who it is. Instead the final quarter sees Alice try to help Triti in a rushed storyline about anorexia and on-line bullying that never really touched me. The romance between Alice and David likewise doesn’t emerge until the final quarter and there wasn’t enough contact between them for me to believe it and I didn’t really get around the idea of love between an avatar and human via a computer terminal.
In conclusion although I liked the underlying idea, the execution didn’t do it for me and I’m not sure I’ll be reading on.
The Verdict:
Kate Harrison’s first YA novel has a great idea by conceiving limbo as a website but the execution didn’t work for me, mainly because the book’s hook is a murder mystery but you don’t find out who the killer is and Alice isn’t really put in jeopardy in the storyline. Instead the final quarter’s given over to a rushed storyline involving one of Megan’s friends and the romance between Alice and David, an inhabitant of Soul Beach, never convinced me. As such, I’m not sure I’ll be reading on.
SOUL BEACH was released in the UK on 1st September 2011. Thanks to Orion for the ARC of this book.
