I wanted to enjoy Virals by Kathy Reichs so much more than I did and I have to agree with some of the reviewers on Goodreads who suggested that Reichs may have been pressured into writing a YA book because of the success of her books for the adult market. But this really seems to be cashing in on the Tempe Brennan books - which in full disclosure I haven't read. I think one of the problems with Virals for me at least was hat the book never really decides what it wants to be - horror/science fiction, forensic mystery, high school drama? It has elements of everything thrown in, but never really picks a genre. Ordinarily I have no problem with combining genres, but this book only barely scratches the surface of the issues it covers despite its length (the hardcover version is around 450 pages, although admittedly there's a lot of white space).
The characters are not particularly engaging and it's hard to relate to the main character (Tory). She's going through a lot in her life, having lost her mother, moved house to a tiny island community with a father she never knew she had, discovered she's the niece of famous forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan and getting caught in the middle of some crazy science experiments and everyday high school drama as a fish out of water in a school for rich kids. But somehow her character is superficial and difficult to engage with. Her pack of best friends are almost indistinguishable from each other although we're told several times that one of them is Jewish and his mother is a bit of a caricature of a Jewish mother. I may read other books in this series, but I'm not going to put them at the top of the list. Overall, I had a bad reading week this week also slogging through The Scarlet Letter for the first time (for no apparent reason other than that I hadn't read it before). Let's hope I pick up some more interesting books next week!
The characters are not particularly engaging and it's hard to relate to the main character (Tory). She's going through a lot in her life, having lost her mother, moved house to a tiny island community with a father she never knew she had, discovered she's the niece of famous forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan and getting caught in the middle of some crazy science experiments and everyday high school drama as a fish out of water in a school for rich kids. But somehow her character is superficial and difficult to engage with. Her pack of best friends are almost indistinguishable from each other although we're told several times that one of them is Jewish and his mother is a bit of a caricature of a Jewish mother. I may read other books in this series, but I'm not going to put them at the top of the list. Overall, I had a bad reading week this week also slogging through The Scarlet Letter for the first time (for no apparent reason other than that I hadn't read it before). Let's hope I pick up some more interesting books next week!
RSS Feed