Despite my initial absolute disdain for the main character, this turned out to actually be a pretty good read. It read very much like a teen horror movie.

 

It tells the story of 17 year old Olivia Flynn, who at such a young age has already become an international best-selling author with a YA trilogy. She has legions of fans, rich parents, and the means to do pretty much whatever the hell she wants. She's got her ticket written to a prestigious Ivy League college because her dad's alumni and her parents are wealthy so she's already got a room waiting in the best dorm on campus. She's completely and totally full of herself and a complete and utter pain in the ass bitch. I loathed this girl from the first page onwards. She flaunts her success and her wealth in the most obnoxious way possible and doesn't seem to give a crap about anyone or anything other than herself. She is absolutely the worst kind of over privileged author who thinks she utterly deserves all the fame and wealth and success right away. She has no patience for the "old women" she constantly sees at conventions and workshops who she thinks don't have a snowball's chance in hell to be as successful as she is

 

On the way to a writers retreat, her expensive car has a terrible accident. She spots a young girl with a flute who appears to have seen everything and shouts to the girl for help. Things go rapidly downhill from there. She wakes in a locked basement room, with the girl’s mother, clad in a “Mrs Daryl Dixon” t-shirt. And her nightmare begins.

 

As things go from bad to worse for Olivia as the mother and daughter team start to torment her, she’s suffering injuries from her car wreck (and constantly whining about her missing £300 Italian leather shoes that are no longer on her feet) she learns that the mother, Peg, seems to think Olivia is responsible for something bad that happened (to either Peg or the daughter, it’s unclear) and Olivia must suffer for it. Olivia clueless brat she is, has no clue what that something is. So she starts to think back.

 

We learn of her oh-so-traumatic childhood. Apparently she was bullied mercifully throughout her school years, to the point of where she developed that hair pulling affliction (which has a really complicated name I can’t remember or spell) no one noticed and no one helped her. The group of girls she wanted to be friends with had her be really mean to a new student who joined the class, but then turned on her the next day.

(spoiler show)

 

 

When her parents found out they pulled her from that school and her mom gave up her law career to home school Olivia who by then had decided she wanted to be a writer and had a talent for it. So instead of focusing on home schooling or even finding a new school to transfer the girl to, Olivia and her mom decide to focus on Olivia’s writing. She got a few hours of school in the morning and then she blabs on about how she worked really hard at her writing and got like, instant success.

(spoiler show)

 

 

Which personally, I didn’t agree with at all. Yes, it sucks horribly when people pick on you for seemingly no reason other than they can, I've been through that myself, so I know first hand just how frustrating and horrible it can be.  It’s really really had to be sympathetic at all to Olivia, even though what she went through as a child was horrible because she’s such a hateful know-it-all bitch at present.

 

Though I hate the fact that this little bitch had only a bit of school work in the morning and then got instant success for a writing career. I loathe Olivia so much I can’t find anything redeeming about her to be happy that she rose above the bullying and became successful. She didn’t deserve to be destroyed the way she was, but I do think her parents coddled her too much when they found out. They didn’t’ report it to the school or get anything done about it or send her to a therapist or anything like that. It’s let’s become famous and successful and then they’ll all see how awesome I am. Which just makes me want to gag.

(spoiler show)

 

 

 

As Olivia remembers she’s continually tormented by Peg and the daughter, and their horrible cousin Wesley who is a really slimy piece of work. Olivia starts to take in her surroundings and think about how she’s going to escape. What she’s seen on movies and TV and what not to do. To be fair, she’s actually pretty logical and shows some keen intelligence when we get to this point. Which comes with more reminiscing about her past and her oh so fabulous carer.

 

She remembers when a novel came out a few months after hers with a very similar plot. So similar that she blogged about it and her fans gathered up and called it plagiarism and actually went after the other author, verbally attacking her and pretty much destroying her career. Olivia doesn’t think she did anything wrong.

(spoiler show)

 

 

As much as I loathed Olivia, and rather enjoyed seeing the little brat desperately trying to preserve herself and figure it all out, it was actually a pretty good read. Though it still drove me up the wall when the red herrings came back in and the answers finally came to light and Olivia found out what it was she had done that was so terrible. And it was pretty fucking awful on her part. Yet of course, she manages to justify it to her benefit so of course can’t have done anything wrong at all and she deserved none of what happened to her. (Spoiler – she totally DID deserve everything).

 

At least by the epilogue she had finally toned her hatefulness down. The ending did make me grin. A totally and utterly deplorable main character, but if you can look past that, a pretty good read.

So this book is basically Misery for the YA crowd. The "author" is a seventeen year old brat who reeks of privilege and thinks she's the coolest thing since sliced bread because she wrote a best selling trilogy at 17. Which may be possible, true, but why her? This girl is just plain awful. 

 

18 pages in I hate her guts and can't wait to see the bad guys go all Annie Wilks on her spoiled stupid ass. 

**SPOILER FREE**

 

This book just really wasn't for me. 

 

Basically, Eli and his family have lived in an underground compound for six years. His dad built this compound in the event of a nuclear war. No luxury was forgotten. He built an underground mansion. Eventually, some problems occur with their "home" Eli begins to question his almighty father. Eli begins to wonder is his family really safer inside or out?

 

I had some problems with this book. First being the pacing. We have no concept of how much time passes between events. It felt rushed and awkward. I also did not feel attached to any of the characters. We didn't get to see very much of their personalities or see any emotion from anyone. 

 

There is a sequel to this book, however this concludes with an epilogue that ties things up. I don't really see the need for another. 

Survival stories are one of my favorite genres, and I haven’t read one in years, so I knew that I needed this book as soon as I saw the cover.

The narrator, Robie, is on a cargo flight from Hawaii to Midway Atoll when her plane crashes into the ocean. Robie and the co-pilot, Max, are the only survivors. All they have is a yellow raft, a few supplies, and the garbage that they pull out of the ocean.

This novel goes fast. The action begins quickly and doesn’t let up. I started reading, and then suddenly I was halfway through the book, and then suddenly it was over. If you’re looking for something that you can read in a few hours, I’d recommend this one.

I did have some issues with the story. Robie is a very bland narrator. I never really got a sense of her personality. All I know about her is that she’s extremely incompetent at everything, thinks she knows better than everyone else, and gives up easily. Those are interesting character traits, but I would have enjoyed her story more if I’d known her better. I had a hard time caring about what happened to her because she never felt real to me.

There is a twist ending. I don’t want to spoil it, but I didn’t think it was much of a twist. I kind of suspected that it was coming. This same twist has also been done several times in other books and movies, so I wasn’t surprised when it did happen.

Even with my criticisms, I enjoyed The Raft. It’s a quick read and an entertaining way to spend a few hours.

An interesting YA read with a protagonist that has lived for six years in a rather luxurious fall-out shelter with his family.  Suffering from survivors guilt and fully aware that he is not the nice twin, Eli is just beginning to question his father's motives.  Having an initially unlikeable narrator actually helped me get caught up in the story as he starts to wonder what his twin would have done...

 

I read this book to preview it as a possible gift for my thirteen year old nephew.  While I don't think he is mature enough to handle some of the realities of Eli's situation, I found it an enjoyable read.

 

If you like YA dystopian/survival fiction with a decently quick pace/tight plotting, along with some potentially gruesome but not overly graphic twists, then The Compound would be a great choice.  I'll read the sequel at some point, hopefully my library will add it to their ebook collection soon.