I got this book a long time ago. It’s been on my TBR list since its publication. My favorite reviewers/bloggers and even some of my favorite authors have done nothing but rave about this book. So of course, I dove into with high expectations, which can be a risky thing to do. And in this case, I think my expectations were a little too high.
I enjoyed it. It definitely stands out as a unique piece of
YA fiction, but it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. I also think
reviewing/summarizing it will be hard because there is just so much info I
really don’t want to give away. And I’m sorry for any spoilers that might pop
up in my review. I kind of see no way of going around them because the book
starts in the middle. And the middle, as you can tell from the title, involves
a lot of blood.
The middle: Nora going over to her best friend’s house to
find blood everywhere, her best friend lying dead on the floor, her best friend’s
girlfriend and therefore her friend mentally traumatized and pretty much
comatose in shock, and her boyfriend MIA. Then everything goes back to a
beginning where Nora, her best friend: Chris, Chris’s girlfriend Adriane, and
Chris’s roommate, Max all get involved in the Latin translations of an ancient
book.
Chris is a year older than Nora and Adriane (his
girlfriend), and is at college. He gets Nora involved with the Latin
translations because Nora is a Latin genius. Max is interested in Latin as
well. And Adriane really doesn’t have much to do with the translations, but
hangs out with everyone anyway –throwing in some yoga stretches every now and
then. Nora is told to focus on some letters written in the time period of the
book while the boys get to work with the actual book hands-on.
No one knows though that the letters are actually more
important. The letters involve the key to finding the mystical device mentioned
in the book, a device that allows human beings to literally converse with God.
Everything is pretty much normal until the professor leading all the students
with this project is attacked and all the manuscripts go missing. From there comes break-ins, funerals,
hospital visits, and a lot of confusion.
When Adriane finally comes to from her traumatizing
experience, she of course remembers nothing. And the girls decided to continue
on their class Paris trip even though the two boys they’d hoped on spending it
with are gone. No one knows where Max is and the police seem pretty intent on
keeping him as the prime suspect in Chris’ murder investigation. Luckily (or
maybe not so luckily depending on how you look at it), Nora really connected to
the woman who’s letters she was reading. The woman (century’s ago) had been
really brave and eager to prove herself intellectually just like Nora, but more
than that she had lost an older brother. Nora has lost her older brother too.
And because Nora felt that one particular letter was too
private for anyone else to see, she kept it (illegally). And while this letter
is the reason her best friend is dead, it also provides the starting point for
one epic European goose chase. Nora and Adriane go off to search for the
machine that so many people seem so willing to die and kill for. The book deals
with death, mourning, murder, faith, science, education, love, friendship, and
history. And I loved the scene where we finally get to see what the machine is
or isn’t capable of! Yes, the girls make it that far, but that’s all I’m going
to say.
So how could I not have loved this story? It was pretty epic. And I was dying to see how everything would turn out. I also loved how smart and relatable Nora was. I loved how believable and flirty Adriane was too. I loved how the two of them sort of just became friends out of necessity even though they had nothing in common. I loved how every character valued knowledge so highly! Even Adriane who dumbs herself down sometimes for boys, was so clearly fascinated with where the letters were taking them.
So how could I not have loved this story? It was pretty epic. And I was dying to see how everything would turn out. I also loved how smart and relatable Nora was. I loved how believable and flirty Adriane was too. I loved how the two of them sort of just became friends out of necessity even though they had nothing in common. I loved how every character valued knowledge so highly! Even Adriane who dumbs herself down sometimes for boys, was so clearly fascinated with where the letters were taking them.
I loved how smart this book was overall! I can see it being
hard to read though for a lot of teens. There’s a lot of historical information
and detail. There’s a lot of letters that kind of took me a little too far away
from the real story sometimes and a lot of times felt unnecessary. It read like
an adult book. And while I love adult themes in YA; the stuff seriously
attracts more readers, I just see this kind of as an adult-ish book being hard
for a lot of teens to finish. There’s so much detail, and it took me almost a
week to read. My normal pace this past month has been a book a day. It didn’t
take so long because it wasn’t interesting or wasn’t good. It just involved
more work. Work can be good, but in this case I just wish it was little bit
more fun. And believe me, I so think solving puzzles and translating ancient
tomes is fun; it was just missing something, some spark that could make it more
fun for young people.
The one thing that seriously bothered me (because its
adultness/lack of spark still kind of worked for me) were the male characters.
The only one I liked died. Chris was the only real guy for me. Max always
seemed suspicious and unreal. And Eli just seemed too good to be true. And I
never liked either of them. Nora was way too smart to fall for some of the stuff
she did. I mean I just spent how many words talking about how adult the book was?
Nora was so much an adult through everything that I found it hard to believe
she was so childish when it came to all the boys who liked her.
And most of all, she was not angry enough about something
one particular boy did! I just found her tolerance of what happened to be so
unbelievable. She wasn’t given a lot of time to dwell, but still. There was so
much dwelling on her brother and on Chris to the point where I really needed
more progression in the book and considered putting it all down for good, and
then when something major happens with her boyfriend, there’s no thinking about
it at all.
Wasserman does get major credit from me for writing something
so unique. I’ve seen this book repeatedly referred to as the YA The Da
Vinci Code, and frankly, I think it was smarter than The Da Vinci Code, or at least more complex and thought out. I just
wasn’t believing in or having any real empathy for the male characters. And
there was a little too much focus for me on loss. It’s hard getting wrapped up
in a thriller when there’s so much grief. I liked it sort of as a separate
entity from the mystery, but by the end it kind of got in the way of my
enjoyment of the mystery overall. I give this book a 7/10.
I didn't really bond with Chris, but I could see that being a problem. Eli totes didn't come across as too perfect to me either, so I really ended up liking him, though at first i wanted to smack him.
ReplyDeleteNot having read The DaVinci Code, I can't say for sure, but I suspect you speak truth about the comparison. This book was SO smart.
oh my! how did I miss this one? holy cow, this one is definitely for me, so I'm putting it on my "must read" list! Thank you for sharing your review! Bravo!
ReplyDeleteregards,
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