Dangerous Boys
Abigail Haas
Simon and Schuster
2014
A half-built
house; a knife; a girl; two brothers.
That’s how it ends and also how, for Chloe, it all begins. When Ethan Reznick sauntered into her life
with his easy smile and laid back attitude he was exactly what Chloe
needed. An escape from her parents’
divorce, her mother’s depression and the dawning realisation that she might
never escape from her dead-end job in her dead-end town. Yet even with Ethan by her side, Chloe craves
something more and when his brother – the charming, blunt, disconcerting Olly –
shows up in town she starts to wonder if the brother she’s not with might be
able to offer her a little more than the brother she is.
It says a lot
about a book when, just 48 hours after reading it, you can’t remember the name
of the protagonist. This is largely, in
the case of Dangerous Boys, due to
the protagonist being pretty forgettable. Chloe is a fairly familiar
character. For as long as she can
remember she’s wanted to leave her small town for the bright lights of college and
when her plans are derailed she feels resentful, disillusioned and pretty sorry
for herself. It’s all very
understandable, especially as she spends a lot of her time looking after a
parent who has clearly had a nervous breakdown yet it’s hard to feel any real
sympathy for her. This is not because she is self-serving or disdainful
(although she often is), nor because she uses Ethan as a comfort blanket,
despite knowing it’s unfair (although she does) or even because she hovers ever
closer to Oliver, despite her ties to his brother (guilty again) but rather
because she is just very poorly written.
Her character is neither one thing nor the other and while this may have
been intentional, it oddly imbues her with an air of crashing predictability
and no originality whatsoever.
The boys are also
cardboard cut-outs. The fresh faced boy
next door and the sly yet oh-so-attractive bad boy. Ethan is likable throughout but has no depth
and Oliver is cartoonish in his obvious villainy. Seriously, if he’d burst into evil cackles of
laughter, while ominously stroking a white cat at any point, I would not have
been surprised. Other characters in the
story include the boys’ mother, who clearly has concerns about her offspring, a
kindly Sherriff and Chloe’s own mother whose personality and illness are
carelessly written as an utterly unilluminating plot device.
The structure,
pace and plotting of Dangerous Boys
leave much to be desired. Chloe’s
narrative segues between the present – where things have clearly gone Very
Wrong – and the past, where things began.
In the present one boy is gravely injured and the other boy is
missing. Haas clearly wishes readers to
ponder the mystery of which boy lies in the hospital bed but sadly it is entirely
obvious from almost the first page. As
the story unfolds, there are points at which is has potential to become
interesting but Haas instead rushes it towards a conclusion which is, to be
fair, pretty weird. Chloe’s final actions,
thoughts and words come on the back of such poor characterisation as to be
nonsensical. This review is based on an early advance copy of the book and, for
the first time, I actually wondered if I was reading a version that had yet to
be finished. I’ve stated before my love
of ambiguity in endings – it can be a brave and effective choice – but only if
your story has the strength to hold it up.
What makes Dangerous Boys so disappointing is that
it follows the brilliantly compelling Dangerous
Girls. The latter was almost
impossible to put down, unpredictable and carried with it an air of strange
reality, informed as it so clearly was by the Amanda Knox case. Abigail Haas seemed to have emerged as one of
a new generation of teen writers keen to embrace the legacy of Point
Horror. And perhaps she will return to
form with her next book. In the meant time,
those Point Horror fans among you should give this one a miss. Pick up Dangerous
Girls, or anything by Gretchen McNeil or James Dawson but leave these Boys
and their confusingly dull protagonist a miss.
This review was brought to you by Splendibird. Dangerous Boys is available now. Thank you to the publisher, via Edelweiss, for providing us with a copy of this title to review.
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