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A review by sdb27
Ten by Gretchen McNeil
3.0
Meg and her best friend Minnie have been invited to a party on a secluded island—every teenager’s dream getaway, especially since there will be hot guys and free booze to look forward to. Even more interesting, Meg’s crush T.J. will be there, making it really hard to avoid him. Not to mention the fact that most of the other people on the island are not exactly the kind of crowd she wants to be stuck on an island with for three days. Then… things get weird. A series of freak deaths have Meg and the rest of the kids searching for answers, and discovering that these accidents might just be part of a larger, much more deadly plot of revenge.
In case you were unaware, Ten is a modernized, teenified retelling of And Then There Were None by suspense great Agatha Cristie (Ten Little Indians being the more controversial, original US-edition title. You don’t want to know the original UK title). Ten takes all the elements of Christie’s masterpiece and, while keeping the original themes of revenge, isolation, and suspense, manages to create a respectfully original story. However, there’s something decidedly less frightening about a modern setting, regardless of the isolation or the paranoia that the characters felt. I’m not quite sure if that’s the failing of the writer or merely a disconnect between modern day and the past—Ten never really rang true to me as a reader, though I enjoyed And Then There Were None greatly.
As for the characters, the reader never really gets a chance to get to know them past their stereotypes before they get whacked by the murderer. It’s a shame, because you are given glimpses of depth to each, which remains regrettably unexplored—although, admittedly, this is due in part to the fact that they started dropping like flies. Regardless, at the end of the book, I could barely remember who was named what, let alone what they were like. Having stock filler characters that you can’t really identify with as a reader meant their deaths had little impact, and therefore it made the situation not seem all that dire because you don’t get to invest yourself in the characters.
In the case of the protagonist/heroine of the story, Meg, I felt like she was the blandest of characters. I got a feeling that the author tried to make her interesting by having her be quirky and creative—she wants to be a writer—as well as giving her a bit of mystery when it comes to her relationship/connection with T.J. However, as with a majority of characters in books like these, Meg proved to be incredibly dumb when it counted—in figuring out who the killer was. While the book did a good job keeping me guessing who the killer was, I certainly knew who it was not, but unfortunately Meg didn’t share my sentiments, because she accused the wrong person, which almost ensured her untimely demise. Of course, if characters in books like this were too clever, they wouldn’t be stuck in that whole mess in the first place. But then I wouldn’t have much of a story to read, would I?
Overall, the book gets points for attempting to breathe new life into a genre mastered by Agatha Christie, and presenting it to a new generation. However, I think that, aside from the moderately twisty murderer reveal, the book fell rather flat. The characters were cardboard cutouts of their stereotypes, and there wasn’t enough originality to the story to make it feel like anything other than a “remake” of And Then There Were None. However, the mystery of the murderer was a driving force of the novel, and possibly the highlight, aside from the character development of Meg and T.J. Overall, a quick, somewhat entertaining mystery read—but if you want the real deal, you gotta go Christie.
____
For more book reviews, visit my blog The Bookshelf!
In case you were unaware, Ten is a modernized, teenified retelling of And Then There Were None by suspense great Agatha Cristie (Ten Little Indians being the more controversial, original US-edition title. You don’t want to know the original UK title). Ten takes all the elements of Christie’s masterpiece and, while keeping the original themes of revenge, isolation, and suspense, manages to create a respectfully original story. However, there’s something decidedly less frightening about a modern setting, regardless of the isolation or the paranoia that the characters felt. I’m not quite sure if that’s the failing of the writer or merely a disconnect between modern day and the past—Ten never really rang true to me as a reader, though I enjoyed And Then There Were None greatly.
As for the characters, the reader never really gets a chance to get to know them past their stereotypes before they get whacked by the murderer. It’s a shame, because you are given glimpses of depth to each, which remains regrettably unexplored—although, admittedly, this is due in part to the fact that they started dropping like flies. Regardless, at the end of the book, I could barely remember who was named what, let alone what they were like. Having stock filler characters that you can’t really identify with as a reader meant their deaths had little impact, and therefore it made the situation not seem all that dire because you don’t get to invest yourself in the characters.
In the case of the protagonist/heroine of the story, Meg, I felt like she was the blandest of characters. I got a feeling that the author tried to make her interesting by having her be quirky and creative—she wants to be a writer—as well as giving her a bit of mystery when it comes to her relationship/connection with T.J. However, as with a majority of characters in books like these, Meg proved to be incredibly dumb when it counted—in figuring out who the killer was. While the book did a good job keeping me guessing who the killer was, I certainly knew who it was not, but unfortunately Meg didn’t share my sentiments, because she accused the wrong person, which almost ensured her untimely demise. Of course, if characters in books like this were too clever, they wouldn’t be stuck in that whole mess in the first place. But then I wouldn’t have much of a story to read, would I?
Overall, the book gets points for attempting to breathe new life into a genre mastered by Agatha Christie, and presenting it to a new generation. However, I think that, aside from the moderately twisty murderer reveal, the book fell rather flat. The characters were cardboard cutouts of their stereotypes, and there wasn’t enough originality to the story to make it feel like anything other than a “remake” of And Then There Were None. However, the mystery of the murderer was a driving force of the novel, and possibly the highlight, aside from the character development of Meg and T.J. Overall, a quick, somewhat entertaining mystery read—but if you want the real deal, you gotta go Christie.
____
For more book reviews, visit my blog The Bookshelf!