Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Review: Kill Switch by Chris Lynch

Daniel’s grandpa suffers from short term memory loss and awkward moments of lucidity and insanity. The old man begins sharing violent stories from his “work” as old co workers begin popping up to “check on” him. Daniel realizes there is more to gramps’ unsettling stories than he’d like to believe and more to the thinly veiled threats from the creepy co workers.

Kill Switch is a short book I hoped would be an entertaining reprieve for my teen book discussion. The plot was promising, the concept interesting. And the first half delivered a satisfying combination of mystery and humor (the car scene! The car scene!).

Then along came the “kill switch,” when Daniel abruptly and illogically becomes violent as he guards his grandfather. The moments of violence made no sense to me and my teen readers. We were like, “Huh? What was that violent act for?” The ending was untirely unsatisfying and rather unbelievable. We spent most of discussion poking holes in the plot.

So, not the best read. Not my favorite. Not terrible either and it was fast. You can’t love every book but at least we had fun laughing about the ridiculous plot discrepancies during discussion!

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2012    Pages: 176
Rating: 2 stars     Source: Public Library