3.5 stars

I had no idea what was going on at first for this book because some of it is from a dream-like state using symbolism or telling about things that you don't know the connection to until later in the book. One character is trying to figure out what happened in this altered state while another is trying to figure out the murder from clues in real life. Some parts are quite suspenseful and some are scary action. It definitely held my attention but the parts that tried to make the story have a lighter feel felt off to me. It's mostly mystery, even a tad on the thriller side, but it's also sad. I liked the story but it did leave me sad. Everyone getting together at the end seemed weird to be like a happily ever after or something, especially the reenacting. I was like what? I guess the author wanted to not leave the reader sad maybe? ( )

Basically an outstanding book, well written and well narrated, but it might be best to read the book before listening as the story line and plot are very involved. I love audiobooks, but when your attention drifts, you can get lost. This a SYNC title in the SORA app., and is not easy to move back and forth in. Donovan is basically in a coma and near death so his story is very confusing at times

On the night Donovan Turner is thrown out of a car on a highway in the middle of nowhere, he can barely remember his own name, let alone the past 24 hours. Where is he? Where is his girlfriend, Bee? In an attempt to flag down the next passing car, he startles the driver, causing a fatal accident. With sirens in the distance and the lingering feeling that he's running from something - or someone - Donovan grabs the dead driver's briefcase and flees. Meanwhile, Bee is fighting for Dono's life every bit as much as he is. But when the police show up and hint that he is the prime suspect in a murder, Bee is determined to put together the pieces of what happened and clear his name. With echoes of Dante's Divine Comedy, this harrowing journey through hell and back is a page-turning tale of guilt, retribution, love, and redemption. ( )

I was reluctant to start reading this book due to somewhat low ratings and negative comments in reviews. I need not have worried though. Once again I'm reminded not to be influenced by the ratings of others.

I actually liked this book and didn't find it confusing at all. It was a slightly different way of putting together the pieces of a mystery and leading the reader forward. The supernatural aspect overlapping the real world events was energizing to the storyline. The main character, Bea, made some poor choices - typical of her age -which raised the danger level and the suspense. The ending was a bit weak, but satisfying enough. ( )

Literary Merit: Good
Characterization: OK
Grades: 9-12
Optional Purchase

Donovan’s father was murdered and on the same night he was gravely injured in a hit and run. The police suspect that Donovan murdered his father and then stepped into the path of a vehicle to kill himself, but Bee doesn’t believe this and will do anything to prove that Donovan did not hurt his father or himself. Donovan’s body is unconscious in a hospital bed, but in his mind he is on a journey to answer some important questions about how he ended up in this state. Meanwhile, his girlfriend Bee sits by his side trying her best to interpret the garbled words and phrases he utters in his sleep.

From the very beginning, this book throws the reader off balance. Donovan’s journey seems realistic at first but soon takes a bizarre twist, and the reader is left to search for clues to what really happened in this fever dream spiked with memories. Part two of the book takes an unexpected left turn and becomes a much more plot driven, traditional, murder mystery novel. I appreciate when an author writing for teens puts a unique spin on a genre that can sometimes be filled with stock characters and cliches; however, it just didn’t work for me in the end. The two parts of the book were too disjointed in tone, and I didn’t like how the major turning point separating part one from part two happened off the page. One final gripe...some of the decisions that Bee makes in the second half of the book are throw the book across the room level of stupid.
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Need to try again ( )

I received this book as part of a Librarything giveaway in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Candlewick Press for sending me the book!

When Donovan wakes up he neither recognizes the car he’s in nor the driver talking to him. It’s the middle of the night and Don has no idea where he is or how he got here. To make matters worse, another person, seemingly unconscious, is lying under a blanket in the back of the car. Before he knows what’s happening the mystery driver kicks him out and leaves him alone in the middle of nowhere. When Donovan tries to stop another car to ask for help, the driver loses control and gets into an accident. The young man then sets off walking and arrives at an old weed farm where he finds his father drunk and gambling with two less than righteous looking men. His father who is dead. And whom he supposedly killed.

At the same time, Bee is watching over her boyfriend Donovan, or Turn as she calls him, in the hospital. Turn has gotten into a bad accident and is now in a comatose state; only waking up every now and then to mumble a few incoherent words. While most of it does not make sense to Bee, she is certain that Turn tells her that he killed his father. But how? And why?

“The Ruinous Sweep” started out as a very promising New Adult crime and mystery novel and the first 100 pages easily catch your interest. The reader is just as confused as Turn and Bee with what is going on and it takes a few chapters to piece together the first few puzzle pieces of the story.

Unfortunately though, said puzzle pieces are often very confusing and don’t seem to fit together as well as they should. The narrative, though intended to be broken up into bits and fragments to make the story more interesting, is all over the place and often hard to follow. Some things just don’t make sense and don’t fit into your classic murder mystery genre, leaving the reader confused and frustrated.

SPOILER ALERT***
It isn’t until later that the reader realizes that things often don’t make sense because Wynne-Jones’ novel includes a substantial amount of supernatural elements. While that in itself is not a bad thing, it is something that the reader just doesn’t expect when picking up the book.

While one naturally assumes that Bee’s storyline takes place in the present - with a comatose Donovan in the hospital - it makes sense to think that the chapters focused on Donovan are set in the past and meant to tell the reader what really happened. In reality though, those chapters are Donovan wandering around some sort of in between world where he encounters ghostlike people that do have a resemblance to people he’s met before but who seem to either want to help him move on into the afterlife (or forcing him there by trying to kill him the in between world), find his way back to the real world, or both.

I personally found this narrative not just very confusing but also not very interesting. The author’s writing, though fast-paced and appealing, does nothing to distract from the overall frustrating plot. The story is all over the place and sometimes gets stuck. I DNF’d the book at 206 pages. 2.5 stars. ( )

I just did not love this book. I wanted to like it. The premise was intriguing. However, it skips around so much. I think that was by design, and it was meant to be confusing as part of the appeal of the book. I think the author wanted to keep you guessing, but it was just so hard to follow. I didn’t enjoy reading it because I always felt like I was missing something. The chapters from Bee’s point of view were the only thing guiding the story, but it was not enough to keep me wanting to come back for more to find out what happened. ( )

There's something about Tim Wynne-Jones' writing that doesn't always appeal to people, but for me, it always keeps me on my toes and makes me turn the page. The Uninvited did that for me, and so did this one. I was really into it in the beginning, and towards the end I was too. The book did seem to be a little dragged out in the middle, and I was definitely a bit confused, but in the long run this was still a really interesting read!

This book is a mystery/thriller, but it definitely doesn't have your typical ending; yet, without a doubt, I could feel myself rooting for the characters.

One thing about this book is that there's no clear "main" character until you're well past halfway of the book. It sort of jumped around and this could be a little confusing for sure.

I did feel like the ending "reveal" could have been done better, as it was sort of an information dump where the main character finds out everything at once, along with the reader. ( )

Although not poorly written, this book is a mess, and not even a hot one at that. I'm not sure what it's going for, trying to be, nor who is the intended reader.

A few general observations and reactions for anyone considering:

- At 400 pages, this is an (over) long book and felt it.
- It's not obviously intended for any particular audience, nor does it fit in any particular genre. It's neither mystery, nor suspense, and it's YA only because the main characters are teens, not because it's particularly has anything relevant to say to or about teens.
- For most of the book, the story unfolds through a couple of character perspectives: Donovan (who is comatose) and Bee (his girlfriend/only friend). The last third of the book or so is only Bee's perspective.
- There seem to be a few parallels between this book and the Purgatory part of the Divine Comedy. But, even if so and intentional on the author's part, nothing is made of that or comes out of it.

Without spoilers, to the plot:

- When the story opens, Donovan lies in a coma, on life support in a hospital. He's apparently the victim of a hit and run accident. His perspective is entirely internal from a non-conscious state and it's hard to discern what's dream and what's real. He never regains consciousness.
- Bee, his girlfriend, is summoned to the hospital in the middle of the night to be interviewed by the police. Turns out, that before Donovan was hit by a car, he may or may not have violently assaulted and killed his estranged father with a baseball bat.
- It turns out that the hit and run accident that put Donovan in the coma looks to be intentional. That makes two "mysteries" in this book, neither of which are particularly mysterious or intriguing: 1) who hit Donovan and why and 2) did Donovan kill his father and why.
- Donovan's family situation is...weird, to say the least. Even though we're told that "Dono" was fairly popular and involved in lots of activities (he plays baseball in a league), no one besides Bee, the police investigators, and, briefly, his mother and her new boyfriend, come to visit him at the hospital. If people who know him can't be bothered to care about his fate, why in the world would the reader?
- Donovan communicates (only) to Bee and she keeps a notebook of his comatose moanings and mutterings and the clues they contain or lead her to investigate. To everyone else - medical staff, family, police - he is non-responsive, so it's super-great that he's sharing clues from the other side with the high school girl that he's been dating for, like, two months. Because, you know, teen romance is like totally deathly serious.
- Bee plays junior detective and seems better at it than the actual, seasoned adult detectives. However, her life comes under threat by Donovan's killer. Why, you ask? Because she's a witness or a loose end...or something. While I think the intended reaction is edge-of-seat DAT ENDING DOH, my reaction was more like PPPFFFFTTTTT, srsly?
- There are threads in Donovan's perspective that may be due to him being unconscious, but they are NEVER revisited and it's just a lot of superfluous red herrings. Like the shootout by the motorcycle gang, the possible disposal of a dead body, the references to a "pedo" on the loose, or the drug organization he stumbles upon. This is the book equivalent of the same kind of spin-a-wheel crime drama plot points that Lifetime Movies are built upon.

Lifetime Movies may be ridiculously over the top, but if you watch them, you know that's what you're getting. This book was also ridiculously over the top, but unintentionally so. It takes itself way too seriously and drowns under its Afterschool Special-like weight of manufactured drama. ( )

I received this book from Librarything's Early Reviewers program.

I had a very hard time with the beginning of this book. There are two perspectives, one is Donovan who has memory loss and can't remember if he killed his father, and the other is his girlfriend Bee, who is trying to help Donovan figure out what is going on. I found Bee's chapters much more interesting and easy to follow, even the majority of the action happens during Donovan's chapters. Donovan's portion of the book was full of confusing flashbacks that didn't really make sense (hence his confusion as well). That being said, the second half of the book was much more interesting and less confusing.

I honestly wouldn't know to whom I would recommend this book. This isn't a typical thriller, but it also isn't your typical mystery. I'm not sure what this book is. I think if you like either/both of those things and are looking for something different it might be worth a try, but this book was not for me. ( )

What a head-spinning mystery Wynne-Jones has weaved with this one. Readers are thrust into a state of confusion from the very beginning, just like the main character Donovan, who knows someone has been hurt or killed, he just doesn't know how or why or even if he is the one responsible. The story jumps from dream to reality as he tries to piece together what happened.

This book requires a tremendous amount of patience and attention as the story line seems to spontaneously jump around to random spots and events, just like in a dream, which the author was able to portray successfully. Personally, I got a little dazed and confused reading this, but I think the die-hard mystery readers would enjoy figuring it out. ( )

I chose this book because it was unlike any other I’d seen from Candlewick Press thus far. Covering death and murder under the guise of a suspenseful read, while remaining light enough for young adult seemed like hard shoes to fill.

The Ruinous Sweep was certainly bizarre as it toed a fantasy-like world between life and death. Donovan finds himself suspended in a coma, producing a dream state that is confusing to the reader. We are led through Donovan’s dying state and Bee’s hunt to uncover the truth. Bee’s sleuthing untangles the fantasy of Donovan’s final “dreams” and slowly the story becomes clearer. However this, combined with, author Tim Wynne-Jones continuous, unannounced flip between Bee and Donovan made the story extremely hard to follow as it unwound.

As a reader, we are intentionally left with little back story or accompaniment as Donovan lays in a coma. However, as the focus turns to Bee’s investigation the story begins FINALLY make sense. Patience is crucial throughout this book as the answers are uncovered in time.

For the full review, please visit: https://fortheloveofthepageblog.wordpress.com/

*A review copy of this book was provided by the publisher, Candlewick Press, in exchange for an honest review. ( )