I only grabbed this book because I thought cover looked interesting. I didn’t put two and two together until I finished the book. Creepy and at the same time a good horror sci fi in the YA section.

To be fair, the pace of the book starts off a little slow at first. Think of it as a very slow introduction to the characters and establishing the setting, and where they’re going to be headed to on their space journey.

Then hell breaks loose when they’re on the moon

And wow, the pace picks up considerably and it instantly becomes a page turner. Now I understand there needs to be a mystery aspect to the novel - whether that’s necessary to establish the plot or not, that I’m not too sure. I welcomed it regardless because everything starting coming together and you find yourself racing through the novel to find out what’s going to happen next.

Considering this is a YA sci fi novel, you’re not going to come across anything astronomically complicated when it comes to the science aspect of it all. No physics lessons or rocket science (literally.) It’s not meant to be a complex read so it’s ideal when one doesn’t want to bother with NASA lingo.

Be prepared for a twist at the end. I was completely floored and it made the read incredibly enjoyable.

Greatly recommended and well worth the read. We need more like this in the YA section! (and if you do find one, please let me know! I’m open to reading more of this!)

**SPOILER FREE**

OH MY GOD, THIS BOOK!

Just finished this book and I feel like my head just exploded! This one is a sci-fi/horror targeted for young adult readers. 

NASA has been suffering from lack of interest, and lack of funding. They haven't sent anyone to the moon since 1972. NASA decided to hold a lottery for teenagers to be sent up on the next trip to the moon. Mia, Midori, and Antoine are the lucky winners. (Or not so lucky!) I cant say too much about what happens on the moon without spoiling the whole book. However, THEY ARE BEING LIED TO! 

We follow different perspectives and while that added to the creepy and mysterious feel to the book, it was often hard to tell who was speaking and when. There wasn't clear indicators who was talking. I also found myself not really becoming attached to any of the characters, but somehow that didn't really lessen the experience of reading it. Another aspect I didn't care for about the characters was the INSTA-LOVE. Antoine and Mia are throwing around the words I love you a week into meeting each other. We also get perspectives from the side characters, the astronauts. I did enjoy that.

You can really see how much research was done to write this book. Everything from NASA history, to Japanese folk stories, was looked at to make this book accurate. I loved this book because it truly freaked me out, and kept me guessing about what is happening to them on the moon. A pleasant surprise I didn't know going into this book was its graphic designs. We have eerie photos, letters, and text. They really added to the overall dark and creepy feel to the book.

I would definitely recommend this one to all readers! 

Loving this one so far!

I love the weird, mysterious feeling it gives off. I definitely feel like they are being lied to about whats in space!! Shit is going to get crazy soon! 

Top 5 Wednesday was created by gingerreadslainey, check out her channel!

This week's topic is of course: Halloween recommendations! 

I do not really read a lot of horror/creepy books, but here are some of the ones that kind of scared me or that I think had a creepy atmosphere.

5. Coraline by Neil Gaiman: I read this as a child and it was really creepy. I re-read it this summer and I liked the atmosphere of this book, it is not really scary but it has a Halloween-feeling.

4. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs: creepy pictures, tragic story and dark atmosphere. Really amazing!

3. Dracula by Bram Stoker: nothing better for Halloween than this classic vampire story. I am currently reading it and it is really scary.

2. The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories by Tim Burton: beautiful, gloomy and dark. And also really funny, Tim Burton is a genius.

1. 172 hours on the moon by Johan Harstad: I read this last year and it still haunts me sometimes. It was really one of the scariest books I've ever read. 

 Halloween recs are more than welcome !

NASA announces a historic lottery to help fund their new lunar expedition. Teens of between the ages 14 to 18 can sign up, and three lucky someones will be selected to train with the astronauts and come along on for a trip to the Moon. There is already a moon base they can stay at, DARLAH 2, established in the early 1970s for research and observation, but never actually used, for reasons the higher ups with the right security clearance would prefer not to answer. The same goes for questions about what the fate of DARLAH 1 was. There is an old, senile man in a quiet nursing home, who used to be a maintenence worker at Area 51. He sees the news broadcasts about the lottery and the upcoming lunar expedition and something inside him is screaming in terror. No one must return to the Moon, the lunar expedition is a terrible idea! Unfortunately, his illness is far enough advanced that he can't actually voice his thoughts and fears to anyone, and explain why another mission to the Moon may be disastrous.

The three teens who are selected are Mia from Norway, who plays in an all-girl post punk rock band, mainly acts stroppy towards her well-meaning parents. The only one she seems patient and nice to is her mentally disabled younger brother. She doesn't actually want to join the lottery, and is incredibly upset when she discovers that her parents signed her up. When it turns out that she's been picked out of the millions who signed up, her band mates are the ones to persuade her to finally go. 

Antoine from Paris signs up for the lottery after his girlfriend dumps him and he wants to be anywhere else. He's very interested in historical planes, and develops worrying stalkerish tendencies where he goes up to the Eiffel Tower to use the binoculars there to spy into his ex-girlfriend's bedroom window. By the time the kids have completed their NASA training, he and Mia seem to have fallen for each other.

Japanese Midori doesn't feel like she fits in with most of her peers, and spends most of her free time making costumes, hanging out with other social outcasts in the Harajuku area of Tokyo. Her biggest dream is to leave Japan, like her older sister who moved to London. When she's picked for the lottery, she hopes to be able to persuade her parents to let her stay in the US after the lunar mission. 

All three teens experience mysterious and ominous events before the arrive for their training with NASA. Antoine sees a plane apparently crashing into the ocean; Midori and her parents can't seem to find the correct gate at the airport and a ghostly voice in a rest room tells Midori not to leave Japan; Mia meets a strange homeless man in Central Park with strange writing on the back on his hoodie. 

Darlah, or 172 Hours on the Moon was awarded several literary prizes in 2008, when it was first published and in 2014 it was voted the best Norwegian young adult of all time by a panel of teenage readers and book journalists. The book certainly seems to appeal to a lot of the teens I teach, especially the girls (because sadly, most of the teenage boys in our school don't read unless they're forced to). One of the girls in my current class said it "made me look at reading in a completely new way" and I couldn't really refuse to read the book after an endorsement like that.

What I liked:

- The actual premise of the book

- Midori seemed like a perfectly nice character

- The NASA astronauts were cool

- Mia's family were nice (the other two teen's parents may as well not have existed for all the time the book spends on them)

- The slowly increasing tension and growing feeling of unease in the book

- The clever ways in which the book plays with genre conventions. There are a lot of fun pop culture references. 

What I disliked:

- The book has a very slow start. Far too much time is spent with the teenagers before the results of the lottery are revealed, mostly dwelling on details that have nothing to do with events that become relevant later. The book would have been more engaging if it got to the point faster.

- Mia really isn't a very likable character. She appears like a spoiled, ungrateful brat and I didn't really see why her friends wanted to spend time with her or why her parents didn't just tell her to snap out of her sulk. The slow beginning of the book just emphasises these negative qualities.

- Antoine's stalker tendencies. This is another way in which the lengthy unneccessary exposition at the beginning was more detrimental than beneficial. If so much time hadn't been spent on showing Antoine and Mia as dislikable, I would have been more engaged with their budding relationship later in the book as well.

- The horror aspect of the book. I had not realised that this book was both a sci-fi AND a horror novel. The horror was very well done, but I'm a big ol' wuss and it just made me uncomfortable.

I don't want to reveal too much more about the book, because that would spoil the story and it's best to go into the book without knowing too much. I can absolutely see why this is extremely appealing to young readers, but for someone who is as easily creeped out as I am, this is just not for me.