#scandal by Sarah Ockler | Book Review | Continued
Hello again! #scandal week continues! The book is about social media and it's effects on high schoolers, and many social media sites feature a Throwback Thursday tag... anyone remember MySpace? That top ten friends feature got competitive! Still nothing compared to what kind of cyberpressure Lucy is put under in #scandal, though. On Day One I talked a lot about our main character, Lucy, a little about the plot, and a good bit about bullying. Today I want to talk about the actual writing in the book, and the pacing.
The writing is great! That's it.
lol No, really: #scandal would really appeal to a young adult audience. The chapters are relatively short, and have really fun titles. For example, one chapter is titled "IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM, JOIN 'EM, THEN BEAT 'EM AFTER ALL THE JOINING, BECAUSE THEY TOTALLY WON'T SEE THAT SHIT COMING." The plot flows really smoothly, too, from chapter to chapter. The shortish chapters don't equate to choppy writing. When I was reading it, I was simultaneously taking care of a newborn and working full time, and I never had a problem picking the book (and the story) back up after setting it down.
Another neat feature: the inclusion of "text speak" and "blog speak." Every so often, there'd be snippets of conversations between characters exchanged via texting, and Sarah Ockler uses all the acronyms and substitutions, such as "u" for "you" and absence of capitalization. There's just the right amount of this, in my humble opinion. Enough to keep teens engaged and "bought in" to the story; not so much that I (an "old" person) get frustrated with the lack of grammar! Same with the informal faux blog posts. I would so love to recommend this book to ALL THE TEENS, but I will warn my grown-up readers that the book contains some four-letter words. Not many! But a few.
Finally, let me tell you how on-track the pacing of the book is! I never felt like it was moving too fast or too slow. I would call it a pageturner, because it's got a bit of a whodunnit vibe to it, but I was never literally biting fingernails. That same whodunnit vibe was really well executed as well: I never did figure out who the real culprit was behind #scandal or Miss Demeanor! I rode every twist and turn in the plot like a fun roller coaster.
See you tomorrow for the final day of #scandal week! I'll be sharing a few (non spoiler) quotes with you!
*Cover image taken from www.goodreads.com.