It was supposed to be the weekend of their lives—an exclusive house party on Henry Island. Best friends Meg and Minnie each have their reasons for being there (which involve T.J., the school’s most eligible bachelor) and look forward to three glorious days of boys, booze and fun-filled luxury. But what they expect is definitely not what they get, and what starts out as fun turns dark and twisted after the discovery of a DVD with a sinister message: Vengeance is mine. Suddenly people are dying, and with a storm raging, the teens are cut off from the outside world. No electricity, no phones, no internet, and a ferry that isn’t scheduled to return for two days. As the deaths become more violent and the teens turn on each other, can Meg find the killer before more people die? Or is the killer closer to her than she could ever imagine? I first want to mention that this book takes place in our (the Bibliomaniac's) high school, so we're all familiar with the places mentioned in the book. This novel is definitely suspenseful and keeps you at the edge of your seat. The first time I read it, I was alone at home and it was raining outside and I. was. freaking. out. To think that these events were happening to my fictional classmates and were at a place that I was familiar with. The book is very fast-paced and the people are dying one after the other so you're never bored. The second time I read this, I searched and found all the Easter eggs and references that I didn't the first time around and made all the connections that the reader doesn't make until the end of the book. So overall, reading this book was enjoyable for me both times around. -Alise Read more for a small Q&A with the author and to know why I would give this a 7 out of TEN! Since Gretchen McNeil had written our school into her book, she paid us a visit and Mallory was able to ask her a few questions:
What feeling/emotion did you try to convey in Ten? “A mix of real, panicked fear of being trapped somewhere,” Gretchen says. Ten was meant to convey a sense of fear, urgency, and the need to fight back—plus, it maps up the intensity as the book goes on. Gretchen also tries to evoke a sense of sympathy for Claire by using bullying as a main theme of the book—but with some very dark twists. How do you go about writing such an elaborate mystery story? “A lot of pre-planning—I knew the killer before I started!” Gretchen says that, when writing something so complicated, you always have to know where you’re going, and move the “spotlight” around on the murderer while keeping the end goal in mind. Gretchen kept a detailed outline of all the character’s deaths, too, and she thanks her editor especially for keeping her on track! What is your favorite moment in Ten? “The ‘Home Alone’ moment!” Gretchen says that she used a lot of Home Alone’s feeling of false security for the robbers as inspiration for the Taylor’s house next door to the teens in Ten. Is there a reason you decided to use real school names, instead of making them up? According to Gretchen, all her other books have had to use fictional places because a lot of the action takes place within the school—continuity issues can be a major problem! However, in Ten, little to no action actually occurs within the school, so she could use real place names. “It was fun to write!” What is your personal favorite book, yours or someone else’s? “Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None,” Gretchen answers without hesitation. In fact, this book was the inspiration for Ten. Gretchen highly recommends it to fans of Ten and other mysteries, as well as any of Agatha Christie’s books! I love the plot and idea for TEN, but something that always makes or breaks a book's rating for me is their portrayal of high school, whether it's a real one or not. The YA genre high school has a clear popular group that everyone is dying (excuse the pun) to be in and the main character is the loser of the school that gets the most popular guy in the end. Sound familiar? That's because that's what McNeil used. Now, I don't blame her, because I can't even begin to count how many other authors have done the same. It's been reiterated so many times that these high school in YA are unrealistic and part of the reason that YA has been given the bad reputation for being shallow (now that's a whole other blog post that needs to be written). The portrayal of the typical American is so unrealistic that it kills the "realistic" part of "realistic fiction" and thus it doesn't sit right with readers and they can't connect with it. Kamiak High School (the high school in the book) has over 2000 students, which means about 500 students for each grade, and the classes have mix the grades together so it's nearly impossible to know everyone in your respective grade, much less be known to everyone in school and achieve schoolwide popularity, even if you're the head cheerleader or football player (since they're typically at the top of the food chain in these YA high schools). Now, I concede, that there are lot of high schools out there with a considerably smaller population, but even then, do you really see cheerleaders only dating football players and the goths brooding behind the school. I don't think so. People have more than one interest. The girl that dresses in all black can also be part of the dance team and the captain of the sports team can say his favorite holiday is election day because it's true. Books that rely on this stereotypical YA high school complex for the whole plot usually fail in my mind. Thankfully, McNeil did not use this for her whole plot since TEN classifies as a teen horror suspense novel. She only uses it briefly (though it does serve as the motivation for some of the characters) as Minnie's motivation to go to the party (to rejoin the popular crew) and to pair up TJ (head athlete) and Meg (who arguably has the Mary Sue complex and thus the loser of the school). More specifically to the book, I felt that Meg and TJ would kiss at the most inappropriate of times. Their friends are dying all around them and they find time to hash out old Homecoming drama with a kiss. They just discovered the killer and had killed him so they kiss. Shouldn't they be in shock? Unable to function? Shaken up and grieving that their longtime friends have just been brutally murdered with six other people? Concerned at all that they themselves might be suspected of all the murders? Thanks for reading!
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