Stephanie
Written on Aug 25, 2018
Theo Mackey only remembers one thing for certain about the fire that burned his life down: he lit the match. Sure, it was an accident. But the blaze killed his mom and set his dad on a path to self-destruction. Everything else about that fateful night is full of gaping holes in Theo's mind, for good reason. Maybe it's better that way. As captain of the Ellis Hollow diving team, with straight As and solid friends, he's only one semester away from securing a scholarship and leaving his past behind. But when a family history project gets assigned at school, new memories come rushing to the surface, memories that make Theo question what he really knows about his family, the night of the fire, and if he can trust anything - including his own mind.
- ISBN10 0765396955
- ISBN13 9780765396952
- Publish Date 19 June 2018
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 14 December 2022
- Imprint Tor Teen
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 336
- Language English
Reviews
shannonmiz
Written on May 27, 2018
I have a little bit of the mixed feelings on this one. The beginning was quite slow for me, but the second half really picked up quite a bit. So, let's discuss what I liked versus what I didn't!
What I Liked:
- Obviously, Theo's story is quite emotional. I mean, dude's an orphan for goodness sake, you have to feel for him! So I think off the bat, it made the stakes a bit higher. And it definitely isn't tropey- his parents may not be around, but they are still very present in his mind and in various points of the story, so that's handled quite well.
- Diving! So fun, right? Diving always fascinated me because I was freaked out just doing starts in swimming (admittedly though, I'm a bit of a coward) and was amazed that people just... did twists and flips off of a seriously hard piece of plastic. The author did a great job with the diving stuff too, I thought.
- Iris. I love me some Iris. I can't say a ton about her because of spoilery things, but she was hands down my favorite character!
- The end of the book was really exciting! I was so glad to see it pick up, and I was definitely very curious as to what the outcome of the story would be! I did guess a few aspects of the ending, but it was still a good one!
- Friendships and teammate camaraderie are fabulous! It's so refreshing to see a solid dude friendship that is like, healthy and even emotive. And I believed that Chip and Theo were as good of friends as the author wanted it to seem like, they genuinely cared for each other, Chip's family welcomed Theo, it was just a really nice dynamic.
What I Didn't:
- Like I mentioned before, it was a slow start for me. I felt like in the beginning, it was just a lot of Theo's everyday life. Which I get, obviously a story has to be set up, but maybe it was a bit too much setup? I started to get a bit restless waiting for the action to happen. I seriously contemplated stopping for a bit, then thankfully things picked up.
- I didn't get Theo's beef with this one dude, Les. He just hates this one diver guy, and I didn't (and still don't, actually) understand why. For awhile he's salty because he wants to go to Stanford and this dude is suddenly a good diver too but... like college doesn't work like that? Stanford doesn't just take one diver, and also, they've probably been recruiting for ages because it's Stanford, so frankly, neither of them are probably going. This is probably me being a little picky, but also, I seriously wanted to understand where Theo was coming from and I couldn't.
- While the story did pick up a lot in the second half, I still did guess some of the bigger points. And look, this wasn't a wholly bad thing, because the ending still wrapped the story up efficiently, but I do like being more surprised, you know?
Bottom Line: Started off slow, but ended quite well. Definitely had well-developed characters, especially for a thriller, and also, diving!