{Synopsis} – In four hours, Shelby Jane Cooper will be struck by a car.
Shortly after, she and her mother will leave the hospital and set out on a winding journey toward the Grand Canyon.
All Shelby knows is that they’re running from dangers only her mother understands. And the further they travel, the more Shelby questions everything about her past—and her current reality. Forced to take advantage of the kindness of unsuspecting travelers, Shelby grapples with what’s real, what isn’t, and who she can trust . . . if anybody.
Award-winning author Nick Lake proves his skills as a master storyteller in this heart-pounding new novel. This emotionally charged thrill ride leads to a shocking ending that will have readers flipping back to the beginning.
{My Thoughts} – There will be lies throughout this book as the title suggests. Shelby Cooper is a seventeen year-old home-schooled daughter of an extremely overprotective single mother. Shelby isn’t allowed to do anything without her mother around, which comes off as extremely strange due to her age. It isn’t until you get further into the book that this is explained to the reader.
In the beginning of the book the main character and her mother are both described through Shelby’s eyes. I have to admit that if my teenage child described me in that sense I would be grounding her until she turned eighteen. I am not okay with a lot of the description within the pages of this book. I was not okay with how unrealistically the main character, Shelby, had been described either.
Shelby is outgoing with her mother and they banter back and forth. Mostly because Shelby wants to see the world and her mother just wants to stay in their apartment doing nothing but the same day to day routine. On Friday’s that routine changes and they go to the batting cages, have ice cream for dinner and Shelby gets to go to the library while her mother is at work. While she is at the library she usually talks to a boy named Mark that works there.
Mark eventually becomes a key character in the book and helps Shelby to figure out what her purpose is and what to do with her life once things start falling apart right before her very eyes. It’s always amazed me how things can so quickly change in the blink of an eye, things are good and then you blink and things don’t make any sense and then the go on to become terrible. That is sort of what happens to Shelby, but you learn more as you read through the book and eventually some makes sense but not all of it, because I Still have questions even though I have finished the book.
This book isn’t written in the common way most books are written. The conversations are all in italics which makes it hard to sort some things out. There are also many sentences throughout the book that are missing words, those words are replaced with brackets and it never is explained why it is written in this style, but it does leave the reader rather confused throughout the book.
Also, it is written as two stories in one that merge into one final story at the end, but it is really difficult at times to keep reading one part of the story because it isn’t as interesting as the main part of the story. However, without it, I don’t think the reader would have a clear understanding of Shelby and the character that she is meant to portray.
I wasn’t real fond of Shelby throughout the entire book. She came off as spoiled, ungrateful, rude, sarcastic and to put it bluntly not a nice person. I understand she had went through a lot within eight days, but I don’t think any teenager should be allowed to act in the way that she had throughout the book.
In the end, to me the book seemed to lack the ability to pull me into the story and keep me there, locked within the pages. I wasn’t able to relate to the main character and I wasn’t able to make myself believe that I was a part of the story as I was reading. I honestly felt like I Was reading a newspaper article in a sense, one that I had very little interest in reading but was still reading it because I needed something to read. I can’t really recommend this book to my readers because I didn’t find it to be worth the time I had spent reading it, but who knows, maybe some of my readers will love the book. Everyone has different taste in the things in which they read and like and some may just like this book even though I didn’t.
Final Conclusion: 1 Star Rating.
