Play Book Tag discussion

3.5 stars

Have you ever heard a joke/story that you didn't "get" until the next day. That is how I feel about this book. Mike and his friends are closing down their senior year, dealing with proms and unrequited love as well as dysfunctional families. Mike parents in particular are horrible -- his father is a drunk and his mother is so focused on her career in politics that she doesn't notice the serious toll it is taking on her children.

I really loved most of the characters -- especially the siblings Mike his older sister Mel and younger sister Mer. It was great to see how dealing with their crazy family had built a string bond among them. However, the great joke running through the book was while they had mostly normal lives as the "unchosen" ones, there were 'indie' kids battling the forces of evil in the background. Each chapter opened with the supernatural war. I was listening to the audio and so at first, I really didn't understand how these blurbs fit with the rest of the story --- in fact my husband had to explain it. Now I want to go back and read all the blurbs because I do understand that they were making fun of some of the YA tropes of late (vampires, and zombies, oh my). I however still didn't get the stuff about Jarrod (view spoiler)[being a god, since I thought he was trying to focus on the 'rest' of humanity who didn't have the special powers --- perhaps that is just another joke that I didn't 'get.' (hide spoiler)].

JoLene wrote: "3.5 stars

Have you ever heard a joke/story that you didn't "get" until the next day. That is how I feel about this book. Mike and his friends are closing down their senior year, dealing with proms..."

It sounds like this might be a better choice for reading than listening (or maybe have a print version to back up the audio.) I've been wanting to read something by Ness but never quite get around to it.

I would agree that I might have caught on better in print.

I have read the first two books of the Chaos Walking series and they were great -- very different though

More Than This is the book on my TBR. The Chaos series looks interesting.