Eh, I had a hard tie finishing this book. I was expecting to like it based on my interests in YA novels about teens with problems and the Columbine-esque topic of it is timely for me due to my recent reading of Sue Kleobold's book. But the story wasn't very believable.
First of all, it was hard to believe that one kid could successfully entrap all the administrators, teachers, staff and nearly the entire student body in one auditorium by himself.
It was also hard to believe that during his reign of terror, that kids would be tweeting. Don't get me wrong- I love it when narratives take a multi-media approach and include photos, interviews, and various documents, but I couldn't buy into the idea of kids posting on Twitter during the horror. I would have believed phone calls and text messages to loved ones, but not a Twitter feed that responds to reporters' questions.
Lastly, I generally enjoy novels that include a variety of narrators and viewpoints, but each character's 'sections' were pretty short, and that made going between all the different POV's seem very jumpy and I'd forget which character I was reading. It also made it difficult for me to relate to any of the characters because I wasn't getting deep enough into them.
One thing I will applaud this book for though is the inclusion of a teenage lesbian couple among the other main characters. They are not marginalized or made into random victims, and their relationship is characterized as any other young love would be. It doesn't seem as though most of the other characters view them much differently; they are students, friends, sisters, dreamers, pretty much like any other highschool girl. I think there should be more YA books that include gay/lesbian/queer as part of the story, rather than making their sexual preference/gender the entire story.
We need diverse books, but even books that are not necessarily about diversity can be diverse.
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