**spoiler alert** The premise was intriguing: four high school friends survive a Colombine-like shooting and have to come to terms with the event that**spoiler alert** The premise was intriguing: four high school friends survive a Colombine-like shooting and have to come to terms with the event that changed their lives. But the book couldn't quite convince me, even though the writing was good. There was too much that irked me: the author chose to tell the story mostly in the first person plural (the 'we-POV' seems to be a thing among young writers at the moment), alternating with chapters in which one of the four friends' perspective was central (he/she) which didn't give each of the four much individuality, or distinguishable voice; the fact that the plot centers around an additional 'attack' (after the shooting the houses of the 28 victims' families are burnt down one by one, and they all die in the fire) adding an almost gothic twist to the story which didn't seem to fit; the rather stereotypical description of the psychological effects of the shooting (boyfriends get mean, others resort to sex, nobody talks, everybody is 'fine' etc); the postmodern quirk to add chapters with short essays about relevant facts, like burn temperatures, the workings of the human body as well as newspaper articles and the short texts the four friends write about their murdered classmates for the yearbook (I didn't particularly care for tricks like that when postmodernism was still considered hip). In the end, the story and the characters remained unmemorable. 2.5*
Merged review:
The premise was intriguing: four high school friends survive a Colombine-like shooting and have to come to terms with the event that changed their lives. But the book couldn't quite convince me, even though the writing was good. There was too much that irked me: the author chose to tell the story mostly in the first person plural (the 'we-POV' seems to be a thing among young writers at the moment), alternating with chapters in which one of the four friends' perspective was central (he/she) which didn't give each of the four much individuality, or distinguishable voice; the fact that the plot centers around an additional 'attack' (after the shooting the houses of the 28 victims' families are burnt down one by one, and they all die in the fire) adding an almost gothic twist to the story which didn't seem to fit; the rather stereotypical description of the psychological effects of the shooting (boyfriends get mean, others resort to sex, nobody talks, everybody is 'fine' etc); the postmodern quirk to add chapters with short essays about relevant facts, like burn temperatures, the workings of the human body as well as newspaper articles and the short texts the four friends write about their murdered classmates for the yearbook (I didn't particularly care for tricks like that when postmodernism was still considered hip). In the end, the story and the characters remained unmemorable. 2.5*...more
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