The 100 Society

by Carla Spradbery

[Leah]

When I saw that The 100 Society was a “Read Now” title on Netgalley, I took a punt on it. It’s not my usual genre – it’s a horror/thriller, but I thought it sounded really interesting. So I downloaded it, and by the time the end of August came, I wasn’t entirely sure I was going to get around to reading the novel – I’ve got so many other books to read and because it wasn’t my usual genre I was going to just leave it to sit on my Kindle a while longer, but after putting together my master list of e-book review copies, I decided to push on with my September releases, and first up was The 100 Society.

The 100 Society has a fantastic, cracking plot. I really, really loved the story of The 100 Society. The whole tagging 100 buildings, the mystery around who is involved and what happens, and trying to do it all without being caught and expelled added a certain sense of unease to the novel. I was a bit disappointed that we only get to see one tag being done by the group – Grace, Pete, Faith, Cassie, Ed and Trick. It’s right at the beginning, too, and without any background information it’s a bit of a confusing opening to the novel. But we eventually learn why they’re tagging buildings, and why there’s a risk involved. It becomes slightly more dangerous when the group start receiving threats, and are told not to trust anyone (I know, it’s how all horror movies start…). But the concept was solid, right up until the very end, and I didn’t even guess who was behind it all, which is always a plus.

What wasn’t so much of a plus was the characters. I barely felt connected to them. It’s as if Spradbery thought she didn’t need to tell us anything about the characters – defining characteristics, what they look like, I’m not even sure where in England the novel took place, except for the name of the school. So it sort of seemed as if you could have been reading about zombies for all the info we get on the group. They needed more fleshing out, they needed to feel real, instead of fake. The novel needed the type of characters worthy enough to be part of this story, of this really great concept for a novel, and they kinda fell flat. They needed more depth, that was sadly lacking. It would be interesting to me to know if Spradbery always goes more for plot than characters, but it’s definitely a weak spot of this novel.

Overall, if all of The 100 Society had been as dramatic as the finale, I would have loved it more, because the finale had my heart racing. And if the characters had been better described, I would have been on cloud nine. But, it was a solid horror read. I enjoyed it, I kept reading it, and I certainly did not guess who the baddie was. So that’s lots of awesome check marks for the novel, it was just really lacking in characters descriptions/personalities/depth. I would definitely check out more of Carla Spradbery’s work because I was impressed with the concept and execution of the story of The 100 Society (although I would have liked to have known why Grace’s brother didn’t complete his version of The 100 Society – we’re told his year stopped at 70 and I’m curious why!). It’s definitely a novel that’ll have you flipping the pages, mind, because I was desperately curious to get to the end and it was more than worth it, lemme tell you.