Taylor is the leader of boarders at the Jellicoe School. She has to keep the upper hand in the territory wars and deal with Jonah Griggs - the enigmatic leader of the cadets, and someone she thought she would never see again.
And now Hannah, the person Taylor had come to rely on, has disappeared. Taylor's only clue is a manucript about five kids who lived in Jellicoe eighteen years ago. She needs to find out more, but this means confronting her own story, making sense of her strange, recurring dream, and finding her mother - who abandoned her on the Jellicoe Road.
*** Contains Spoilers***
I only finished reading this book yesterday, and want to write down some points of review while it's all still fresh in my mind. Fresh, but not clear. I don't think the plot of this book will ever be fully clear to me, no matter how long or short a time I dwell upon it.
To be honest, for most of the book I was a muddled mess, trying to figure out who was who, what was who, who was what and what was what. It took me half the book to begin to figure the plot out, and practically the other half to actually get into it. Just as I was starting to enjoy it, it ended. Not altogether abruptly, but after spending so long just trying to get my head around what was going on, it did seem to finish without giving me much time to actually revel in the fact that I finally got it.
Did I like this book? Again, yes and no. I read it in a couple of days, so it certainly was engaging. Did I care for the characters? I enjoyed reading about them, but as for actually caring, I'm not sure. I can only deal with so much dysfunctionality until it feels like dysfunctionality for the sake of it. I'm all for overcoming obstacles, but sometimes I'd really love to read a story about someone who was, well... normal. Someone who doesn't have a missing mother, who wasn't abandoned as a child, who doesn't have a drug problem or is enduring severe emotional trauma of some kind or another. But then, I suppose there wouldn't be much of a story if everything was hunky-dory for our protagonist.
Anyway, back to the point of this post. After I realised that the writing in italics was supposed to be a manuscript for a novel that one of the characters was writing, it became a bit clearer, although I still had to mentally recite who was who each time the story flitted from one narrator to the other, as for some reason I just couldn't keep track of the characters.
I really enjoyed how all of the threads came together at the end; that Fritz was the Hermit and the reason he became like he was; who the Brigadier was and what he meant to Hannah; where Hannah had disappeared to and why she never told Taylor how she knew her; how Jessa McKenzie and Taylor Markham were related; why Hannah persisted with the feral, vicious cat, and how Taylor Markham got her name (her mother always said that Taylor named herself, and Taylor took this as meaning that her mother didn't care enough to even name her. But as it turns out, her father gave the name to her; it had come to him in a dream).
One thing I didn't like about the story was the at times excruciating detail about the territory wars. It made up the bulk of the story, so I suppose I can't say it was irrelevant, but it was almost unrelated to the other things going on in the book. The book seemed to be about territory wars between different groups of kids; the Townies, the Cadets and the kids from the Jellicoe Road school. The elaborate lead-up to the main twist in the story was almost forgotten by the end, when everyone seemed to be best friends. I wondered what all the fuss about the territory wars was about if they could all get over it so easily. Another question for the pile, I suppose.
All in all I enjoyed this book and found it an engaging read, although for me it didn't quite hit the mark. I've read some rave reviews about it though, so I'm sure there are plenty of people who disagree with me. Just a minor point, but one thing that grated with me was the scene towards the end of the book where Taylor and Jonah had unprotected sex - I realise that to write "With a sultry, come-hither look, he reached for the condom..." would have killed the mood for the reader somewhat, however I found it quite irresponsible of the author to glamourise unprotected sexual intercourse among teens. Getting down from my soap box now. :-)
I feel that this book is suited towards upper high school students.
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