EricaO

This is the second book in the Riley Bloom series. It didn't grab me the way the first had. I'm glad the narrator was the same because I think she does a good job at giving Riley a voice. Other than that, though, I wasn't really interested in this story. I don't think I actively listened to most of the book. Actually, I was bored, which is a shame because the idea of happening upon a pocket of tortured souls leftover from a slave revolt centuries before is intriguing.

The book is short, yet seems too long for the story it tells. There are too many superfluous moments, things that don't need to be said, situations that don't need to be so spelled-out. Instead of really delving into what led up to a slave revolt, what life would have been like for a thirteen-year-old girl on a plantation island in the 1700's, why the slaves who had died prior to the revolt had been kept there, and other things that would have built a contextual environment, there were descriptions of Rebecca's dress, Rebecca's need to be loved by her father, and how/why Rebecca was a spoiled child, none of which really accounted for Rebecca's anger because the context wasn't there and she came across as any ignored child on a plantation in the 1700's. It would have been easier to say that Rebecca suffered as a child from a general sense of malaise because she had no mother, an emotionally distant father, and bossed the slaves around in order to feel important. It's the same message in a much shorter description.

Riley spent too much time thinking about...well, I don't really know what she was thinking about but it sounded a lot like justifying every action she made. There was very little character development for either Riley or Bodhi. As a result, I got bored and the CD became background noise.

I will listen to the next one; it's not like I hated this book. In fact, I still really like Riley. She's not a consistent character and tends to shift personalities, sometimes sounding more like her sister (whom I no longer like after the second installment in her series) and sometimes acting or thinking in ways that don't resonate with the spunky, bratty, rotten little twelve-year-old I've come to know and like. Still, she's been worth getting to know and I will continue to follow her story.