Cracks

It certainly has been a great summer hols in terms of catching up with my reading. I often struggle to get through my book pile, but with the luxury of seven weeks off (got to love those Olympics when you work in Newham) it’s been a fantastic opportunity to curl up on the sofa and have a read. I haven’t been a neglectful mother though, as my reading times have been grabbed in-between running around with the froglets. Anyway, I digress, which comes as no great surprise to those of you who have read my ramblings before.

The latest book on my ‘to read’ pile was Cracks, a futuristic thriller from new writer Caroline Green. The website has one of those new fangled links to a trailer for the book. I’ll admit that I am not overly familiar with this marketing technique and was a little dubious, but I am assured by my teenage daughter that there is nothing to fear and that it’s ‘cool’. It’s well worth a look; the actor who plays Cal is very convincing, but I am pleased that I read the book before watching the trailer. That’s just me; I like to imagine my own version of the author’s description first, rather than having someone else’s interpretation muddling around inside my head.

When I began to read it, I immediately thought of Dr Who meets The Matrix. There’s a lot of running involved and a great deal of wibbly wobbly time confusion abounding. A superb premise for a thriller in my opinion. The main protagonist, Cal, is a seemingly ordinary teen, with a fair amount of angst churning up inside him thanks to a lousy family life to deal with and the increasing realisation that all is not as it should be. Green’s use of Cal as narrator is inspired, because the reader feels all that he feels, sees what he sees, almost becomes him through the journey of the book.

This book certainly held my interest, as I mentally egged Cal on to fight back against the injustices in his frightening new world. Now I’ll be adding Caroline Green’s Dark Ride to my ‘to-read’ pile.