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Nil (2014)

by Lynne Matson(Favorite Author)

2.91 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0805097724 (ISBN13: 9780805097726)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Henry Holt

series

Nil

review 1: As other reviewers have mentioned, this book has echoes of the TV series Lost and Survivor. If there is a drawback to it, in my opinion, that's it. The students who use my Media Center, however, probably aren't that familiar with Lost and may or may not be Survivor fans, so for them this read will be something fresh and the dialogue will sound real. I also really appreciated that the main characters made a conscious and responsible choice NOT to have sex while on the island, despite their attraction to each other. Anytime characters in YA lit have real conversations about sex and make real decisions about it, I view that as a positive addition to my YA collection.
review 2: I think the strength of most books lies in the characters. Now I know that sounds a ... morebit too obvious, but here's what I mean in reference to this novel. Lynne Matson made me care about Charley, Thad, and the rest of the crew swept off to the mysterious island of Nil. That being said, I think she could have had a little more conflict throughout the book. Quite a few chapters zoom by without much happening. Now I know that in terms of pacing, a writer can't have continuous turmoil on every page, but even when she did introduce some type of danger, it never seemed dangerous enough to warrant me being that worried about it. I've seen the wild boar thing on the show Lost. Random dangerous animals showing up on the island but never really interacting with the characters all that much. I know there are formulas to writing solid YA novels, and this novel definitely had some main elements such as a love story, the awkward teen, a British anti-character who actually turns out to be pretty cool, and so forth, but because she never fully delved into the reason or logistics of how all these people ended up on Nil, I had to suspend my disbelief a lot. But hey! That's what fiction is all about. It's not a horrible read, but some aspects could have been stronger in the end. less

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