Monday, October 03, 2005

Crushed by Laura and Tom McNeil

High school is a cruel place, or at least in the eyes of one Audrey Reed. Audrey is not only a social outcast at her new high school,but has unfortunately been placed on Theo Drigg's, the biggest bully in school, list. Does Audrey care though? No, because she has two of her best friends who are there no matter what,a rich father, brains, and for the first time in her life she has a boyfriend. Audrey's life seems to be perfect, but when her dad looses his job, Audrey's world starts to unravel, she is accused of cheating, she looses her big house, and her boyfriend may be the next article on 'The Yellow Paper," an underground article that reveals the secrets of people at school. In hopes to stop "The Yellow Paper" from revealing a secret, that Audrey doesn't even know, about Audrey's boyfriend, Audrey tries to solve the mystery of who is the writer of the yellow paper, and along the way tries to fix her world which seems to slowly be falling into chaos.

In this book I liked Audrey, but was disappointed that she continuely lied to herself and how easily she allowed her boyfriend to influence her. There was a chharacter in the book who I really liked named Clyde Mumsford, who was a great character because he saw his problems and instead of ignoring them tried to fix them. I kept on hoping that Audrey would do exactly what he did and face her problems. When Clyde tries to help Audrey, she acts like a complete jerk to him, and then later on has him beaten up. When Audrey did that I was really angry at her because he was only trying to help. Throughout the rest of the book I was angry at Audrey,because she hurt Clyde, but I couldn't help pitying her because she was loosing control of her world. "Crushed' was an emotional roller coaster for the characters in the book, and also for you, the reader, because the reader gets connected to the characters, and when something bad happens to a character the reader has a reaction that corresponds to how the character feels. I think the authors did a really good job at writing this book because they created these great characters who you couldn't decide if you hated them or loved them.

Rating (0 - 10 scale): 10
Reviewer Age: 13
Reviewer City, State and Country: Tucson, Arizona United States

posted by Flamingnet Book Blog @ 10:28 PM