13 Minutes by Sarah Pinborough
Dec. 8th, 2015 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
18:24
She really doesn’t remember
U think she will? Im scared
Me 2. I’ll call you l8r.
18:25
I wish she’d died.
DELETE! We’ll be ok.
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.
16-year-old Natasha is the prettiest and most popular girl in school, the queen of a trio of girls nicknamed the Barbies. So when she’s pulled from a river, half drowned and dead for an estimated 13 minutes, everyone wants to know what happened to her. Unfortunately, Natasha doesn’t remember what happened to her, but she wants to find out. Her only ally is Becca, a former friend of Natasha’s who was dumped when they got to secondary school but who, for all her protestations, has never really gotten over it. Together they try to piece together what happened to Natasha in the weeks before her attack and they soon discover that everyone has secrets and someone is willing to kill in order to keep theirs …
Sarah Pinborough’s YA psychological thriller is a well-paced affair that picks apart the tensions that can exist in the relationships between teenage girls and the pressure caused by the need to be popular. At the core of the story is the relationship between Becca and Natasha and, in particular, Becca’s need to try and win Natasha back as a friend. I thought that Pinborough did particularly well at showing Becca’s neediness and anxiety (both with Natasha and her boyfriend, Aiden) without the reader losing sympathy. Pinborough also utilises a variety of inventive narrative techniques, such as text message exchanges, journal entries and interviews with the police and a psychologist, all of which keep things fresh and interesting. Where the novel fell down for me though was in the sections recounted by Jamie, a musician who discovers Natasha and who employs Aiden to help him in his work as he doesn’t have much perspective on the core relationships and so adds little. I also found the characterisation of the other two Barbies – Hayley and Jenny – to be a little two-dimensional, particularly Jenny who’s limited to being a council estate kid with a reputation for putting out and I would have liked for Aiden to get more page time as the twists that come in his relationship with Becca are a little too sudden. The main problem for me though is that she tips her hand as to the identity of the villain a little too early, which robs the final quarter of the book of some tension. That said, I kept turning the pages and look forward to reading what Pinborough does next.
The Verdict:
Sarah Pinborough’s YA psychological thriller is a well-paced affair that picks apart the tensions that can exist in the relationships between teenage girls and the pressure caused by the need to be popular. At the core of the story is the relationship between Becca and Natasha and, in particular, Becca’s need to try and win Natasha back as a friend. I thought that Pinborough did particularly well at showing Becca’s neediness and anxiety (both with Natasha and her boyfriend, Aiden) without the reader losing sympathy. Pinborough also utilises a variety of inventive narrative techniques, such as text message exchanges, journal entries and interviews with the police and a psychologist, all of which keep things fresh and interesting. Where the novel fell down for me though was in the sections recounted by Jamie, a musician who discovers Natasha and who employs Aiden to help him in his work as he doesn’t have much perspective on the core relationships and so adds little. I also found the characterisation of the other two Barbies – Hayley and Jenny – to be a little two-dimensional, particularly Jenny who’s limited to being a council estate kid with a reputation for putting out and I would have liked for Aiden to get more page time as the twists that come in his relationship with Becca are a little too sudden. The main problem for me though is that she tips her hand as to the identity of the villain a little too early, which robs the final quarter of the book of some tension. That said, I kept turning the pages and look forward to reading what Pinborough does next.
13 MINUTES will be released in the United Kingdom on 18th February 2016. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.
She really doesn’t remember
U think she will? Im scared
Me 2. I’ll call you l8r.
I wish she’d died.
DELETE! We’ll be ok.
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.
16-year-old Natasha is the prettiest and most popular girl in school, the queen of a trio of girls nicknamed the Barbies. So when she’s pulled from a river, half drowned and dead for an estimated 13 minutes, everyone wants to know what happened to her. Unfortunately, Natasha doesn’t remember what happened to her, but she wants to find out. Her only ally is Becca, a former friend of Natasha’s who was dumped when they got to secondary school but who, for all her protestations, has never really gotten over it. Together they try to piece together what happened to Natasha in the weeks before her attack and they soon discover that everyone has secrets and someone is willing to kill in order to keep theirs …
Sarah Pinborough’s YA psychological thriller is a well-paced affair that picks apart the tensions that can exist in the relationships between teenage girls and the pressure caused by the need to be popular. At the core of the story is the relationship between Becca and Natasha and, in particular, Becca’s need to try and win Natasha back as a friend. I thought that Pinborough did particularly well at showing Becca’s neediness and anxiety (both with Natasha and her boyfriend, Aiden) without the reader losing sympathy. Pinborough also utilises a variety of inventive narrative techniques, such as text message exchanges, journal entries and interviews with the police and a psychologist, all of which keep things fresh and interesting. Where the novel fell down for me though was in the sections recounted by Jamie, a musician who discovers Natasha and who employs Aiden to help him in his work as he doesn’t have much perspective on the core relationships and so adds little. I also found the characterisation of the other two Barbies – Hayley and Jenny – to be a little two-dimensional, particularly Jenny who’s limited to being a council estate kid with a reputation for putting out and I would have liked for Aiden to get more page time as the twists that come in his relationship with Becca are a little too sudden. The main problem for me though is that she tips her hand as to the identity of the villain a little too early, which robs the final quarter of the book of some tension. That said, I kept turning the pages and look forward to reading what Pinborough does next.
The Verdict:
Sarah Pinborough’s YA psychological thriller is a well-paced affair that picks apart the tensions that can exist in the relationships between teenage girls and the pressure caused by the need to be popular. At the core of the story is the relationship between Becca and Natasha and, in particular, Becca’s need to try and win Natasha back as a friend. I thought that Pinborough did particularly well at showing Becca’s neediness and anxiety (both with Natasha and her boyfriend, Aiden) without the reader losing sympathy. Pinborough also utilises a variety of inventive narrative techniques, such as text message exchanges, journal entries and interviews with the police and a psychologist, all of which keep things fresh and interesting. Where the novel fell down for me though was in the sections recounted by Jamie, a musician who discovers Natasha and who employs Aiden to help him in his work as he doesn’t have much perspective on the core relationships and so adds little. I also found the characterisation of the other two Barbies – Hayley and Jenny – to be a little two-dimensional, particularly Jenny who’s limited to being a council estate kid with a reputation for putting out and I would have liked for Aiden to get more page time as the twists that come in his relationship with Becca are a little too sudden. The main problem for me though is that she tips her hand as to the identity of the villain a little too early, which robs the final quarter of the book of some tension. That said, I kept turning the pages and look forward to reading what Pinborough does next.
13 MINUTES will be released in the United Kingdom on 18th February 2016. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the ARC of this book.
