By: Zhendi C., Grade 10
Summary of my review without any spoilers: This book is an absolute blast to read. The tension build up is quite impressive and I often feel like I’m in the same world with them. Although there are some **major flaws** (this is important), I still enjoyed reading it. The setting is unique, the characterization is vivid, lots of details that’s pretty nice to have, and you can actually feel like you’re investigating with Jet. Some scenes that are irrelevant to the main plot also catched my eyes. It’s so sweet seeing Billy and Jet come together to crack everything out. I felt so sad about the ending and I almost cried when I saw the letters that Jet wrote with her left hand as a final sentence. She also wrote a letter to her dog!!! Awwwwww.
Because this book is so amazing to me and there’s a lot of plots and details I have to share in order to make an interesting review, so SPOILERS ALERT!!!
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Someone just got killed on Halloween night! The police found three suspects. One of them is the real murderer. Suspect A is the victim’s brother, who held a grudge against the victim, had killed the victim’s sister, was desperate to inherit the victim’s father’s company, and committed financial fraud against the victim. Suspect B is the victim’s boyfriend, was around the crime scene during that night, left his wig on the crime scene, went to the exact location where the victim’s stolen phone shut down, texted “sorry” to the victim, used the victim’s truck to make money, and was charged by the police. Suspect C, well, isn’t really a suspect, is the victim’s best friend. He was very nice to the victim, helped the victim a lot, gave the victim a lot of support, dated with the victim, was the victim’s loyal bestie, and helped investigate the crime, as well as gathering clues to find the truth.
Do you know who killed the victim? Yes! After seeing a lot of movies, you know for sure that the real murderer is the one who’s the least suspected. So it’s suspect C!...... Wait, what do you mean the police is the real murderer?!
Yeah, that’s basically what happened in this book. Jack Finney, as a seemingly responsible and nice police officer, is the one who killed Jet, the protagonist. To find out why let’s see what happened in this book.
The book starts with Jet being struck on the back of her head three times. She was “not quite dead yet”, got saved from the hospital because the author didn't want her to die, but she’ll die in 7 days because a bone fragment got stuck on a very important artery. Then she proceeded to solve the case by gathering clues all around the city to find out who actually did it. Billy, her best friend, helped her to solve these things as well. There’s a lot of things going on during the investigation, but in short, there are three main stages. First, Jet found the weapon that was buried by concrete in the Mason construction area. (Imagine a lot of clue discovery that is not really important in my opinion between these two steps) Second, Jet suspected Luke so went into the Mason Construction to find more clues, Luke burned that area down to stop her. Third, Jet accidentally saw the murder weapon missing from the toolkit that belonged to Billy, gasped, and died immediately before Billy could say anything useful. The book ended with an epilogue that revealed the real murderer, Jack, who is Billy’s father.
This book has two highlights that I want to point out.
First, the wordings are just straight up good, the literary devices are good, characterization is good, the author has a really high level of writing, and is good. Apparently I don’t have that level.
The most impressive part is from the beginning, the damage description of Jet’s brain is so vivid. All the phrases like “build up of blood”, “subdural hematoma”, “suffered cardiac arrest from blood loss”, “depressed the bone farther into your brain” etc, basically the whole part describing the injury, really “hurt” my brain as well. Reading this part made my brain feel really itchy.
I also liked how Jet occasionally forgot words like “interview”, “warrant”, and many other words throughout the story to show her head injury.
The scene description when Jet broke out of the Mason Construction Area after the fire was set was awesome, I can feel the fire in front of me. Although not specifically highlighted, I really admire the symbolism of the broken family picture of Mom, Dad, Emily, and Luke, which symbolized that the family wasn’t perfect and there were a lot of hidden secrets that were tearing them apart. Jet used the photo frame to break out of the window, which shows that even though the family is broken, it could still have her. The fire, well, I interpret it as a revenge of the victims.
Last but not least the letters at the end were so heartbreaking. You could just read the letters and call it a day, and still feel the desperation that Jet had undergone. I think the author really wrote the letters on paper using her left hand. Well done.
Second, this book is very different from other thrillers.
Jet did not know who did it even after she died. This is huge. This leaves the reader in great burden. Lots of thrillers have good endings. Or to the very least the protagonist knows who did it. But in this book, Jet not only doesn't know the murderer, but also dies suddenly during a misunderstanding between Billy.
The truth was revealed after everything had ended. The epilogue was very exciting to read.
The murderer is also not expected (at least not obvious if you don’t read carefully). Jack is the police! No one would suspect a police officer in any thriller, or the plot won’t make sense. But in this book it makes total sense, and the motives were self-explanatory.
The different characters and events at first seemed messy, like why would Sophia poison Jet’s dad, why would Luke burn the area down, why would JJ text sorry, etc. But as the truth got discovered bit by bit, everything suddenly got connected together. The setup felt boring and overwhelming at first, but when it all came together you will definitely feel satisfied.
Although this book is pretty good there is one **major flaw** I have to point out, and that is, if you read close enough, you would’ve already realized that Jack is the actual murderer.
On page 44 Jack rubbed his nose. Ok GG, I found the killer. Rubbing your nose is such an obvious indicator of lying, and you might think these three words are nothing compared to the whole book but hey the author literally typed these words down for a reason. If you think like that you’ll probably know Jack is the killer. He’s a perfect character to do it. Not getting suspected, not getting accused, and helping Jet.
On page 86 “Another Smile” “Rubbing his nose” again reinforced my guess. He is DEFINITELY the killer.
Page 175 Jack said now we’ve got him, enjoy the time. JJ got caught. So obviously not the killer he got suspected by so many people. Jack never got considered.
Around page 315 Jack is being overly nice to Jet when she gets into prison. So suspicious. When predators know their prey will get caught anyways, they will become increasingly nice and calm. You know, like in movies, when some killers trapped their target in a place, they will not immediately kill them but instead become very nice, ask some daily question like oh hey how’s it going, it’s very nice, etc. They enjoy seeing the prey die slowly under desperation.
So after noticing these I was prepared for the twist. Still, I was still stressed out towards the end like why didn’t Jet discover anything about Jack?
Also another problem I forgot to add on is that it still didn’t escape the basic rule of finding the criminal. Whenever you find something suspicious about a person, if it is not a sudden realization with a lot of metaphors, then you can cross them out from the list. Whenever you feel like someone is threatening you, someone got mad at you, someone acting suspicious, you can ignore them. It’s that simple. After crossing out everything you should get a very loyal friend next to you. In some cases they are the killer, but in this book their dad is the killer. Ah, boring, but inevitable, because if you write the most suspected person as the actual criminal then you have nothing to say.
After all of this being said, this is still a perfect book to read during your free time. To me it provided another inspiration for my horror games 🙂
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