Panic by Lauren Oliver

Hello there. I'm back with another book review. I know I haven't been posting much else lately but that's mainly because nothing exciting has been happening in my life and I've spent most of the time, well, reading.

 
Panic by Lauren Oliver 

"What will you do if you win?" Heather shook her head. She wanted to say:

Run until I burst. 

Build miles and miles 
between me and Carp. 

Leave the old Heather behind; 
burn her to dust. 

Instead she shrugged. 
"Go somewhere, I guess. Sixty-seven grand buys a lot of gas." 

I gave this three out of five stars because I did like the book but it definitely wasn't one of my favorites. It takes place in a small town called Carp. The teenagers don't really have much to do there so they organize a game called Panic every year, where, as the name suggests, everyone who enters has to take part in a series of crazy, scary challenges. There are judges who decide who did worst after each challenge and those players are then eliminated. The winner in the end wins 67 thousand dollars. Which is of course a crazy amount of money and is why most of the players decide to enter.

The story is told from Heather and Dodge's point of view. Heather entered at the very last second, at first only because she was upset but then it becomes about saving and supporting her sister with the money. Dodge has a different reason from the start. He wants revenge for what happened to his sister. So we follow these two through every challenge and I could hardly read it at times because I got scared just imagining myself in the players' position. But of course those were also the strongest parts of the story and that's why I enjoyed them a lot.

Overall, I think this was a good book. A lot of stuff happens and you won't have to wait for the story to start, you literally jump right in. I do recommend this for when you're feeling like reading an action packed story, but don't expect there to be any deeper meaning behind it, because I you might be disappointed on that end. I still really enjoyed reading it and am definitely glad I picked it up.

 SPOILER ALERT. STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK!

Okay, so I need to talk about the not-so-great parts in the spoiler section, because what I need to talk about is the ending. First of all, I didn't really like how we just got to that last scene without any explanation. I wanted to see what happened right after the race. It stopped with Heather petting a tiger. Just casual stuff like that. I mean, what happened then? What happened to Heather? What happened to Dodge? He blew up the car! Heather could've died! And yet, there they are, all happy and enjoying themselves. I want to know how he explained that tiny incident where he tried to kill someone to the others. "Oh, you know, it wasn't supposed to be you driving that car" isn't going to be enough, is it?

What Dodge did really bothered me. I mean that's crazy. And not just in a fun way that was meant to scare some people. Like the completely insane kind of crazy. He'd actually planned to seriously hurt, if not kill someone. How does everyone just ignore that? As far as we know, there were zero consequences to his actions. And to anyone's for that matter. They broke into someone's house, burned down another one (where, by the way, someone was killed) and then set some tigers free! Are you kidding me?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad everyone's happy in the end. I liked Heather and Dodge and the others and I didn't really want them to get into serious trouble or anything. But it just makes everything seem so unrealistic. I can't imagine anyone getting away with all that.

But yes, these are just my thoughts now that I've finished the book. I did very much enjoy reading it and I still think it's a good book and an entertaining story, just not a very deep one.

Thank you for reading!