The Gist:
Destiny only wanted a vacation. Just a simple week away from the pressure of school and the thought of getting married. When her friend Stephanie invites her to her mother’s new seaside home, Destiny takes her up on it. She goes for a week of relaxation and fun. But on their first night there, they are attacked. In the middle of the night the grandfather clock on the landing (which creeped Destiny out when she first saw it) chimed thirteen times. Suddenly, Leslie (Stephanie’s mom) is gravely injured and Stephanie – in a attempt to save her – is brutally attacked. But by who? And why? None of them remember seeing a person attacking. But Destiny does recall seeing a glowing green light… As Stephanie and her mother are rushed to the hospital, Destiny calls someone important to her. Someone she knows can help her. Not her fiance. But David, her ex-boyfriend who she hasn’t talked to since the breakup. Meanwhile, David’s life is falling appart. His work as an EMT isn’t exactly what he wants to be doing and the thought of Destiny still pains him. While breaking into the appartement of a suicidal man (with a gun) on a call as an EMT – to try to stop the man from killing himself – David’s cellphone rings. Destiny’s calling. This alerts the emotionally distraught man with the gun that David broke into his house…and he’s not pleased about that. After convincing the guy to put the gun down and not kill anyone, David gets an earful from his boss and partner about being too irrational and taking too many risks. They tell him that if he doesn’t stop it, he’ll be fired. So he calls Destiny back and decides to fly out to meet her, taking some time off work. He wants to help her in any way he can. Help her solve the mystery of the random attacks before the clock chimes thirteen times again.
What We Think
What We Think
Reviewed by Dream Catcher
Number of Pages: 246
I really wanted to like this book. REALLY wanted to. Emma Michaels had been so nice during the interview…but that was before we ever read the book. We’d heard about it, and we’d heard that is was great. That was good enough for us – interview time! Let me just say that I hope we don’t do anymore interviews with authors unless we’ve read the book already! Because now I feel guilty for writing a not-so-fabulous review. Anyways…the book, the book. I knew from the very first sentence that I wouldn’t enjoy it. Don’t get me wrong – I certainly kept an open mind throughout the whole thing (because, like I said, I really wanted to like this) but after the first sentence I had a bad feeling that it wouldn’t get any better. The first line is “Destiny flipped her light brown hair back into the flow of the wind.” Right off the bat, from the first sentence, it shows that the writing will not be good. And it wasn’t. To start the book by flipping her hair into the wind…not a good omen. It’s not interesting; it doesn’t make me want to read any further. It’s too random and meaningless to the story as a whole. Beginnings are one of the most important parts of the book (including the ending) and they have to go off with a BANG. This one didn’t. And it was evident.
Anyways, plot. It was…alright. I think the idea itself was good, but wasn’t exactly excecuted right. It was almost too technical. When I read the back of the book – the synopsis – I thought this can’t really be just simply a human attacker. It has to have some…magic, right? Well, there was hardly any of that. All police officers and prison wardens and hospital doctors and nurses and EMTs. There was way too much of that for my liking…it just seemed out of place. It just didn’t seem to fit the picture I had of the story in my mind after reading the synopsis. And its always annoying when the back of the book doesn’t match the story. So…plot was alright but not great.
The characters…they weren’t so great either. Let me first say that the main character being named Destiny didn’t make anything better. No offense to anyone, but I really don’t like the name Destiny (that information was completely irrelevent to this review). And I think the author used that name solely for the purpose of getting jokes out of it. “We met through Destiny”, “I’m dating Destiny”, “I’m in love with Destiny”. Ha, ha. It’s funny because not only is Destiny a name, but a thing, too! Ha, ha. I didn’t find it funny. Now Destiny as a character was almost worse than her pun-inducing name. I didn’t like her very much. She thought she was funny when she wasn’t. She called David to help her but she wouldn’t stop yelling at him and scolding him for being himself. She just wasn’t very likebale. I could stand her, however, for the first 3/8ths of the book maybe. Then the reader finds out that she dumped David after he saves her life – while he was in the hospital – and started seeing another guy a week later. A week! I may not be the master of dating and relationships, but I thought dating some other guy only a week after breaking up with a long-time boyfriend is a big no-no. Something really low. Apparently not to Destiny. Which leads me to my next question,did she ever “love” David at all? Though she claims to have loved him and still love him (as a friend, of course!). I dunno. I just found that whole thing worth mentioning…because it’s kinda mean, right? I mean, a week? After claiming to have LOVED him? Seriously. I found it all ANNOYING. Going along with that (annoying, that is) Stephanie was almost as bad as Destiny. She kept going after David – all the while insisting she didn’treally want to date him – and saying all these suggestive things to him. Okay, maybe it’s just me, but isn’t there some unspoken girl code that all decent people go by that states you NEVER date your best friend’s ex? I thought that was a golden rule. Or at least a silver rule. Anyways, it got old fast. Here’s how it usually went: STEPHANIE: “Blahblahblah something suggestive blahblahblah”. DAVID: “Uh…”. DESTINY: “Stephanie, you tramp, he’s my ex!!”. STEPHANIE: “Yeah…key word being ex!”. Gah! ANNOYING. Leslie was just an all-around okay character. She was alright despite the fact she called everyone “kid” and her refusal to be called “ma’am”. Now David. I don’t know where to begin, really. He was my favorite character…but that doesn’t mean that I like him. He was occationally funny, but by the end he was just ANNOYING. You would have to be SUPER HUMAN to do all he did in this book and survive. It got to the point of utter rediculousness. Okay, now there were two characters that I didn’t understand at all. I mean I understood them…but not their purpose to the story. Carline and Christina. They were basically pointless. Enough said. Enough with characters!
Now I’ll be nice and say something good-ish. The cover itself was pretty good. It was interesting with the pale face and bright eye with a clock face in it…even if it only half-had to do with the book. The title was good too. The Thirteenth Chime sounds dramatic and mysterious. So props on that.
And so, finally, I move on to the last topic: WRITING. Oh, goodness. Sadly, this was the worst part of the book. The writing itself was stiff and awkward and unlikeable. There were some instances where I was cringing at the way it was written. For example, once the word warily was used twice in one sentence. Twice. Inexcusable. I mean if it was meant to make the sentence sound poetic and repetative (or something) than it would be okay. But here it just sounded wrong. If the writer herself hadn’t caught that her editor should have. Sigh. Anyway…the writing sounded young and inexperianced much to my disappointment. Now…the dialogue was flat-out not good. It wasn’t believable. It didn’t sound like something an everyday person would say. Bad dialogue can ruin a book, which is why great dialogue is extremely important. I think if the dialogue had been better I would have liked the book A LOT more. Honestly, the writing flaws in this book are easily fixed with practice and hard-writing-work. It’s not set in stone that Emma Michael’s writing will always be as it is now. Her writing will get better as she works more at it.
This book seemed almost incomplete.It was like she hadn’t quite gotten the story down, or the characters, or the writing. I wanted to like it, but wanting isn’t always enough. I will read her second book, however, in hopes it will be better than her debut.
Real Teen Rating~ D- : If you have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to read.
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