Saturday, September 25, 2010

Hangman's Curse by Frank Peretti

Book one in the Veritas Project series. Click here for book two.

Plot: "The story centers around an apparently supernatural case taken by a family of investigators who make up the Veritas Project. About ten years after the suicidal hanging of Abel Frye, a high school student unable to cope with the pressures of bullying, jocks from the school's football team begin to lose their sanity after seeing what they believe to be Abel's ghost, which is rumored to be under the control of a group of witches out for revenge." Copied from Wikipedia. (I find it hard to summarize plots...)

Comments: this was an interesting story, very mysterious (I seem to be using that word a lot lately) and thought-provoking. It was an entertaining fiction novel, with well-described characters. I liked how Elijah, one of the main characters, becomes friends with an outcast. I appreciated the way he treated everyone like a human being instead of acting like the average teenage guy. I had a few theories as to the real reason why the football team was going insane, but of course, none of them turned out to be correct.

One thing I didn't like about this book was the way it was written. The main characters, both high school kids, didn't seem like normal teenagers. They were definitely mature, which I realize was on purpose, but the way they talked and acted felt off. It was the same with all the other teenagers - none of them acted like the teenagers I know. Also, the high school had actual cliques: the math kids sat here, the jocks sat there, the skaters sat over that way. As far as I know, no high school actually has groups like that. I know mine doesn't! Friends sit together in little groups, sure, but we aren't all divided as obviously as they were in Hangman's Curse. I don't think Frank Peretti did his research very well. Next time I suggest he gives his manuscript to a teenager to read and ask what they think of his high school.

Rating: I rate this book a seven out of ten. Very entertaining.

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