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thepariscarter

Paris Carter

I love reading historical, young adult, romance, and sc-fi novels.

Currently reading

Cloak of the Light
Chuck Black
Story Engineering
Larry Brooks
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley

The Island

The Island - Jen Minkman Leia lives on an island with her brother, where there aren’t any parents. But when her friend, Alex, sneaks into the mansion of their leader, and discovers that their entire lives has been based on lies, they start to look at the people they once called “Fools” on the other side of the wall for help.



The Island is a story of Leia discovering her entire life has been based on lies, and her journey to escape the island she was raised on and along the way she learns the truth. And of course being a young adult novel there’s some romance as well.

There aren’t too many things that’ll catch you off guard in, The Island, due to its simple, linear plot, but it still doesn’t make you want to put it down. The plot has enough freshness that keeps you reading.

The pacing is fast. With a lot going on in the limited ninety six pages Minkman erases everything that slows the novel down. Description being the first thing to go, unnatural dialogue is quick and usually fills most of the pages, and the scenes are bare-bones and stripped to short simple sentences.

The novel itself feels dull and only made me want to put it down. The dialogue was unhuman like and the characters didn’t come to life causing me not to care if they died or lived. Even now, after finishing the novel I can’t tell you anything interesting about any of the characters beyond the fact they live on an island. All novellas are short with limited amount of words and space for character development, but that does not give it an excuse for being poorly written, because after reading book two in the Island series, I can tell you a novella can have a strong plot, interesting characters, and realistic dialogue that makes sense to the reader.

Jen Minkman seems like an interesting young adult author and I’m interested in reading book two in the series just to see how the plot develops. Also hoping for Minkman to write a novel of longer length so I can see how well of author she really is. The only way I would recommend this to one of my friends was if they were willing to go through the first ninety six pages of cheap prose to get to the next novel which turns everything around. My review for book 2 in the Island series, The Waves, will be posted on Thursday, before it’s slatted for release on Friday October 4, 2013, but you can pick up The Island now.