Title: Dare You
Author: Sue Lawson
First Published: 2010 by black dog books
for those of you have been hanging around this blog for a while you'll know that i love Sue Lawson's novels, so you would guess that when i walked into the school library for a reading period and discovered this little gem on the bookshelf i was extremely happy. this was before I'd even started reading.
Dare You is the story of a childhood friendship that starts to fall apart as Sas, Ruby and Kahden reach the middle of high school. they'd been best friends since the beginning of kindy, they've never known it any other way. Now though, with summer holidays around the corner, all there little problems are coming to light. the girls bickering and competing is reaching a dangerous point and Kahden and Sas are starting to think of each other very differently, but they can't let go. so they cling to their childhood games, but they aren't little kids anymore so the rules start to change. it starts to get scary. each of out main characters has their own secrets and problems hidden away, in usual Lawson style, which are making things tense and come to head at a critical moment.
the story is divided up into chapters from all three of our characters, Ruby's in first person, Sas' in first person diary style, and Kahden's in third person. i thought it worked quite well and though i had a favourite character, i LOVE Kahden, it didn't affect my reading of the story and it was nothing to do with the quality of the writing. there were moments where i wanted to grab Sas and Ruby and yell at them, because they were so believable. i felt the language was spot on, I'm about the age of the characters and it was the way i would speak or write. I'll admit i did sometimes find myself checking which character was supposed to be narrating because i was confused, but this is a common occurrence for me once we get 3 or so characters. i really thought the characters were fantastic. though we don't know much about the parents, you feel their side of the story as well, which is true to life and really nice to read.
one thing to know about this book, DON'T be tempted to flick through. i found myself wanting to know what happened next and flipping forward. this was a mistake because Lawson starts her chapters with sentences about Major events. i was unlucky and flipped to the chapter with i very informative start and regretted it for the rest of the book.
the only significant problem i had was with the ending, I'll try my best to keep this spoiler free.
there is a Massive event towards the very end and then the ending seemed to go very fast. i felt a bit cheated almost. i don't think this big event was a cop out, so she wouldn't have to solve the friendship problems. i would have liked to read a bit more either before the big event or after it, just to see that everything was resolved properly. it might have just been me, I'd really like to hear what you think. keep that in mind if you every read Dare You. i strongly recommend you do.
