Review : Trapped
Trapped by Michael Northrop
Pages : 232
Genre : YA, Fiction
Stand Alone
My Rating : 
What it’s about :
When the blizzard started, school was dismissed early, and everyone went home. Everyone, but Scotty and six other students. What they thought would be no more than a few hours, at worst a night, soon turns out into days. Without warmth, light and very little news from the outside world, the seven of them have entered a battle for survival.
I liked many things about this book : the writing, the idea, the realism… It wasn’t enough to really get me completely hooked, but it was enough for me to appreciate the book.
Really, if you want one quick indicator of what kind of storm it was : Drivers froze in their snowplows. (p. 2)
If you open this book waiting for action, adventure, suspense… you’ll probably be disappointed – or, to say the least, surprised. The pace of the story is very slow, with very little happening. Mostly, it’s about how cold it gets, how they get food, warmth, and so on. The characters are well defined in their roles (the beautiful girl, the dangerous guy, the football guy, etc.), but we don’t get to know a lot about them.
I would describe Scotty’s narration as “interior”, and I think that’s why I left the book feeling like not much happened in terms of action. Scotty isn’t describing what happened as much as how he felt when those things happened. There’s little dialog, and the claustrophobic setting translates into a claustrophobic narration. It’s quiet, like you can imagine when the only thing going on is snow falling, again and again, for days. This voice is probably my favorite aspect of the book.
I do think the book could have been a little more concise, and pack even more of a punch with its ending. The ending really let me down; it was a bit too open for my taste, with not enough resolution. Scotty announces from the first few pages that not everyone will survive : yet in the end, we don’t really know who does and who doesn’t. He also mentions many times how he and his friends worry for their parents, yet we never get to know if they’re all right or not.
In the end, I felt like there had been a lot of potential stories in this idea that were never told. I wish I could have know the characters better, and know more about what happened after. It’s hard to put stars on how much I enjoyed the book, because despite how much I liked the writing, the story let me down. Still I think many other readers will enjoy this quiet, shivering tale.
I generally don’t like stories that are paced too slowly, so this may not be the book for me.
I like the idea behind this but I can’t handle stories that are way too slow in pace. I think I’d probably go a little nutty with this one. Nevertheless I really enjoyed reading your review. 😀
I’ve been seeing this around and love the idea. Maybe I’ll give it a go.
This sounds like a really interesting idea for a story, but I hate it when the pace of a book ruins the premise. 🙁 Plus, the open ended bit sounds like something that would annoy me to no end. Tell us people are going to die and then not letting me know who lives? That’d have me throwing the novel across the room. xD That said, if this shows up at the library, I’ll probably cave and check it out.
I agree about the ending. It seemed to come to an end so abruptly. I really wanted to know what happened to their parents and the rest of the town. I also didn’t get why that skier at the end was running away from him.
I really don’t like it when people ruin the ending in a book review.
STOP!!!!!!!!