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24hourlibrary 's review for:
Ten
by Gretchen McNeil
For fans of One of Us Is Lying, Ten is a great and overlooked next read. When Meg and Minnie are invited to a weekend-long party at a house on an island, they can hardly say no. But soon, strange things start happening and their fellow party-goers are dying. Before long, it's clear someone is taking them down one by one, and it's up to the survivors to determine who is guilty before the murderer kills them all.
Ten excels at pacing, relying on short bursts of chapters to keep the tension and anticipation up throughout this short book. Covering just the span of a couple of days, the story manages to pack in quite a bit. Despite the amount of action (after all, there are at least nine people with the potential to die), it's rare that the events feel overwhelming for the short period in terms of narrative pacing.
Character management is slightly more difficult, with so many to track in such a short span. While character definition isn't done without fault, it's done well enough that the average reader can keep track of who is who -- at least for the most important characters. It's easy enough to discard remembered details about characters as they fall victim to the murderer in the house. The psychological effects of the weekend on the characters plays out nicely, particularly for the main character and her best friend. The impacts of the events are clear and make sense from a real life perspective as the characters reason out who is safe and who is trouble and, ultimately, what they need to do to survive -- even if that means turning on long-trusted allies.
Ten pays clear homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, putting in the context of teen drama and boundaries. Readers who don't catch on to the references won't miss out on anything, but those who do notice will enjoy the nods and extra layer of meaning to the story as it plays out.
I did have a few issues with the book that I think are worth noting, particularly as we look more closely at novels for issues relating especially to representation. I'm not among those represented in the novel (at least for this particular discussion), so I'll refrain from judging any of these issues on a scale of how bad the offenses are and, rather, will simply point out that they existed. There may be other issues I didn't catch due to genuine ignorance. First, one of the characters takes on the trope of the Asian hair streak. Another character, who is Black, is fetishized for his skin color. There is use of the word "spaz." And
I can see this book being a popular one for reluctant readers and would definitely point readers to it with the caveat of the issues above. It's a fun, fast read that I finished within a day and not one that I hear about too often, which is surprising, given the popularity of similar novels. If you enjoy mysteries, thrillers, and stories of teen murder, this one is for you.
Ten excels at pacing, relying on short bursts of chapters to keep the tension and anticipation up throughout this short book. Covering just the span of a couple of days, the story manages to pack in quite a bit. Despite the amount of action (after all, there are at least nine people with the potential to die), it's rare that the events feel overwhelming for the short period in terms of narrative pacing.
Character management is slightly more difficult, with so many to track in such a short span. While character definition isn't done without fault, it's done well enough that the average reader can keep track of who is who -- at least for the most important characters. It's easy enough to discard remembered details about characters as they fall victim to the murderer in the house. The psychological effects of the weekend on the characters plays out nicely, particularly for the main character and her best friend. The impacts of the events are clear and make sense from a real life perspective as the characters reason out who is safe and who is trouble and, ultimately, what they need to do to survive -- even if that means turning on long-trusted allies.
Ten pays clear homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, putting in the context of teen drama and boundaries. Readers who don't catch on to the references won't miss out on anything, but those who do notice will enjoy the nods and extra layer of meaning to the story as it plays out.
I did have a few issues with the book that I think are worth noting, particularly as we look more closely at novels for issues relating especially to representation. I'm not among those represented in the novel (at least for this particular discussion), so I'll refrain from judging any of these issues on a scale of how bad the offenses are and, rather, will simply point out that they existed. There may be other issues I didn't catch due to genuine ignorance. First, one of the characters takes on the trope of the Asian hair streak. Another character, who is Black, is fetishized for his skin color. There is use of the word "spaz." And
Spoiler
a Black character is named Thomas Jefferson. Which kind of blew my mind -- sure, I said I wouldn't go on about any of these, but...I don't know. This one seems especially obviously as a no-no to me.I can see this book being a popular one for reluctant readers and would definitely point readers to it with the caveat of the issues above. It's a fun, fast read that I finished within a day and not one that I hear about too often, which is surprising, given the popularity of similar novels. If you enjoy mysteries, thrillers, and stories of teen murder, this one is for you.