The door swings open and a man walks in like he owns the place. He raises his fist. Gripping a handgun. Aimed directly at the teacher. Emery finds it awkward as hell tutoring a bunch of grade-one kids with her ex-boyfriend. It's not easy for Jake either - he knows Emery thinks he's useless, especially after what he did to her. But when a boy's father turns up at school with a gun, a bad situation for Emery and Jake suddenly turns deadly. The boy's father - a soldier home from Iraq - says he just wants to spend time with his kid. But resistance from the teacher has deadly consequences. The man isn't afraid of opening fire, even in front of the children. And one way or another, he's not leaving without his son.
My Rating: 3/5
I found the beginning of the book to be really interesting, the plot was suspenseful and I liked the characters to a degree.
The middle portion of the book seemed to flatline. The fact that the entire novel aside from flashbacks is set in the one room made the story boring at times.
The ending seemed a little rushed but had a very thrilling conclusion.
The characters that I did like were the children as a whole. They were all very innocent and the way they behaved was really realistic.
The relationship between Emery and Jake was not very fleshed out, and there was no real need for their back story. It just distracted me from the main plot of the novel. I found Mr Stutts's back story the most fascinating aspect in the entire book.
It sounds interesting! The title reminds me of This is not a Test :-)
ReplyDeleteIt's on my list!