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donna29's review
5.0
A brilliant short read about a girl that desperately wanted love and found it in the wrong place. The Arthur uses heart-pumping dialogue that I gasped every now and again.
I found the usual dilemma of aimlessly shouting at the main character 'Come on, how can you NOT see all the signs?' and 'why on earth would you let a guy put you down like that?' many times I wanted slap Jenna for not listening to her friend and brother. She was too innocent and gullible.
But a good read nonetheless.
I found the usual dilemma of aimlessly shouting at the main character 'Come on, how can you NOT see all the signs?' and 'why on earth would you let a guy put you down like that?' many times I wanted slap Jenna for not listening to her friend and brother. She was too innocent and gullible.
But a good read nonetheless.
floorlibrarian's review
5.0
Its a thriller, its a thriller, its a thriller. But its also something else, and I can't figure out what though. (Hence the mantra.)
You have the trappings of a thriller: the victim, the predator, the slow build up (where you are screaming at the character to run like hell cos he's going to kill you and wear your skin like a coat) and then the inevitable climax (that singes the small hairs off the back of you neck.
But its more than just a thriller.
When the main character, Jenna, makes that first contact with her new guy Robert, her reactions and words are grounded in a reality that is very relate-able. Too relate-able.The butterflies in my stomach where starting to flutter even at that point already.
(Perhaps because I've seen guys be that smooth and I wanted to punch their faces in because the penny would have to drop sooner or later and I didn't want to be the guy who saw the impending crash and said nothing.) And its set in South Africa, which according to UN statistics is one of the most violent countries in the world.
So a young girl making a connection on the Internet and letting that person into her life doesn't bode particularly well under normal circumstances, add the awareness of Location and it adds another level to the tenseness (The butterflies become flesh eating ants.)
Miss Partridge imbues her climax with such viciousness that it feels like a body blow. It's a testament to her writing prowess that she makes Jenna a thorough pain of a character and yet we are still rooting for her when it counts. (Being deliberately vague because of Spoilers, sweetie.)
That's perhaps what is tripping me up here. It's a thriller but it can be, in this time and place, real life.
And it's a evidence of Ms Partridge's writing prowess, that like Frankenstein she created 'real life' so vividly and like real life what happens in Dark Poppy's Demise, truly matters.
You have the trappings of a thriller: the victim, the predator, the slow build up (where you are screaming at the character to run like hell cos he's going to kill you and wear your skin like a coat) and then the inevitable climax (that singes the small hairs off the back of you neck.
But its more than just a thriller.
When the main character, Jenna, makes that first contact with her new guy Robert, her reactions and words are grounded in a reality that is very relate-able. Too relate-able.The butterflies in my stomach where starting to flutter even at that point already.
(Perhaps because I've seen guys be that smooth and I wanted to punch their faces in because the penny would have to drop sooner or later and I didn't want to be the guy who saw the impending crash and said nothing.) And its set in South Africa, which according to UN statistics is one of the most violent countries in the world.
So a young girl making a connection on the Internet and letting that person into her life doesn't bode particularly well under normal circumstances, add the awareness of Location and it adds another level to the tenseness (The butterflies become flesh eating ants.)
Miss Partridge imbues her climax with such viciousness that it feels like a body blow. It's a testament to her writing prowess that she makes Jenna a thorough pain of a character and yet we are still rooting for her when it counts. (Being deliberately vague because of Spoilers, sweetie.)
That's perhaps what is tripping me up here. It's a thriller but it can be, in this time and place, real life.
And it's a evidence of Ms Partridge's writing prowess, that like Frankenstein she created 'real life' so vividly and like real life what happens in Dark Poppy's Demise, truly matters.
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