Ten ~ Gretchen McNeil review

Ten
Balzer + Bray
September 18, 2012
294 pages
add to Goodreads/buy from Book Depo/or Amazon

SHHHH!
Don't spread the word!
Three-day weekend. House party.
White Rock House on Henry Island.
You do NOT want to miss it.

When they get the Facebook invite for a weekend house party on Henry Island, Meg and her best friend Minnie both lie to their parents about where they're going and take the ferry to the island. Everyone at the party has their own reasons for attending - both Meg and Minnie's involve TJ, the school's star football player and most eligible player . . . but several attendees, host included, seem to be delayed by the encroaching storm.

Soon, though, it becomes clear that their three day, adult-free, party on the secluded island is going to be so much less fun than expected. After watching a twisted, strange DVD with one message: Vengeance is mine they wonder if it's a joke or a warning.

Then the deaths start.

With no one else around, a horrible storm raging and the ferry - that's not due to return for days - the only access to the outside world, and no way to communicate with people off the island the teens wonder if the deaths were accidental . . .  murderer afoot. If there is a killer, can Meg find them? And stop herself and her friends from being the next victims?


Ten is a fun read. Ten teens are stuck on an island, in a house secluded from everything else and, with no way of communicating with anyone else, find themselves possibly in the presence of a killer. There are deaths that happen where there's a bit of a question, at least for the characters, whether or not some outside party caused the death or if the character that died and/or an accident is solely to blame.

The questioning not only brings up just a bit of internal strife with the characters early on, but it (rightfully, it seems), keeps them all from completely freaking out as soon as the first death occurs. It would make sense for other nine teens to just about lose it if a character died and it was an obvious murder, but it would also make it harder for the story and the characters/their relationships to progress.

Ten is a lot like the teen movies and horror movies of the late 1990s/early 2000s - which I mean in the absolute best way. The plot of the book reminds me of all of the things there are to love in those movies while still taking the opportunity to point out some of the flaws they had as well.

Some things in the book seem predictable, but things aren't quite as easy to guess as you might think (or maybe you're a really great guesser and they are!). Certain things I hoped would come to fruition, did so I really can't fault those things for being a bit predictable because I would have been disappointed had they not happened.

I really hope to read more books like Ten. The story between Meg, TJ and Minnie wasn't amazingly unique but it had elements that made it new and it was nice to have it all unfolding in the midst of the, perhaps, more dire circumstances of the rest of Ten.


Rating: 9/10




thank you to Harper for including this in my box of Halloween books & the arc giveaway!