Thursday 1 October 2015

REVIEW: ADRIFT by Paul Griffin

Summary:
Five teenagers. One boat. Who will come back alive?

Matt and his best friend, John, only came out to Montauk for the summer to make a little extra cash and then head back home. A seemingly basic plan for two guys from Queens.

And then Matt meets Driana.

Because it’s always about a girl, right?

The girl leads to a party, the party leads to a boat, which leads to being adrift at sea with three rich kids who have no clue about how to navigate a boat, let alone actually survive.

Matt and John are used to creating stability in unstable situations, but Matt’s busy falling in love at the worst possible time, and John can rub people the wrong way when he’s focused on survival. Driana is trying to keep the peace, but her friends JoJo and Stef aren’t making it easy. The longer they are out there, the lower everyone’s reserves of mental and emotional strength, which is a problem since the biggest mistakes can happen when people are tired and hungry and have no hope.

How far will each of them go to survive?

And what happens when old tensions and past ghosts rise to the surface?


Author: Paul Griffin
Source: Owned (Won a Copy)
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Publication Date: July 28, 2015
Rating: 4/5 stars
Purchase:
DisclaimerI won a copy of this book in a giveaway via the publisher.

So I posted on Twitter how some of my pages were missing ink (4 in total) but that did not deter from the story or my enjoyment of reading it. This was such a great contemporary novel.

I liked the dynamic between the characters. And I am glad that it was a novel in which people died. I think that made it so much more real to me because you knew that it was such high stakes and that the characters would have to deal with the consequences of the deaths. I thought that it was a little iffy how the characters originally got out to the sea/boat/this scenario. I feel like there could have been a bit better way to describe this to the audience (don't ask me what, I would just know it if I read it). I also thought the pacing was a bit off -- it seemed to move really quickly and then not at all at some points.


I also would have liked it to maybe alternate points of view. I would have liked to see things from someone else's pov. I thought Matt was almost "too good" of a guy -- he wanted to see things very glass half full and I would have liked to see the alternate of John and his very logical, realistic pov. I think it would have given the story just the extra bit it needed.

The characters were all interesting but I feel like for how dire this situation was, there still wasn't a whole lot of character development. I liked Dri, I think she probably had the most to give but because we just saw her from Matt's pov, we didn't really get to know her.


It was still a good book though. I read it in one sitting and enjoyed myself while doing so. It kept my attention throughout and I was rooting for some characters to get home safely. I just would have like more of an exploration of said characters.

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