Random

by Tom Leveen

[Katie King]

**I received my copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review**

**1 star**

Random was an interesting take on a somewhat popular subject in YA: suicide. What the author chose to do, instead of the before or aftereffects, was show the impact of suicide on the bully's life. What happens to that person after their targets have killed themselves?

Unfortunately, Random was pretty...random. The entire plot revolves around the bully, Tori, receiving a "random" phone call from a person about to attempt suicide. She can either hang up or have a chance at saving someone (like she failed to do before). I guess this is supposed to attest to her growth as a character, but we don't see any of that. Maybe she was a bad person when she was bullying the kid that died, but at present day she had already experienced that growth. I guess the point was to show that she had changed, and not necessarily how? It doesn't even matter anyways because the phone call wasn't so "random" but more of a random set-up by her brother and the kid she bullied's boyfriend to show her that people have feelings blah blah blah...how RANDOM. Maybe the title of the book is supposed to be some kind of self-commentary.

It was bad. Tori literally spends 90% of the book on the phone with some random suicidal teenager trying to talk him down. Another 5% was her getting up and talking to her brother or driving to a bridge. The last 5% was (in my copy, anyways) poorly formatted Facebook-style posts showing us what Tori did to the dead kid to drive him over the edge. Which was so forced and obvious I couldn't believe.

Speaking of forced/obvious, the premise of Tori's charges were ridiculous. Nobody was going to press charges until a random reporter decided to write an article comparing them to a sociopath in training? Then the police are like, "oh, wow maybe, like...manslaughter sounds good??/?" Okay, sure.

She also engages in a really random romance with someone who wasn't her friend, really, but more her brother's friend that hangs around. Of course they kiss at the end because why not?