Hundred - The Fray

Cryer's Cross

Author: Lisa McMann
Pages: 232
Publisher: Simon Pulse

Brief Summary:
Kendall Fletcher suffers from OCD. Every night, she checks that her window is closed six times. The food in the refrigerator must be organized just so, according to size. She always arrives early to school to arrange the desks, markers and curtains properly without anyone knowing. Kendall lives for routine, and for her best friend, and beau, Nico. Her ordered world falls apart when Tiffany, one of the teen girls in town, goes missing. Who can she trust and where is she safe? Of course, that fear pales in comparison to how she feels when Nico goes missing. What is happening in Cryer's Cross and who will be next?

Review:
First of all, I need to point out that this is NOT a dystopia. The reason I picked the book up was because I had seen it described thus somewhere, but it isn't. Cryer's Cross is actually more of a psychological thriller/fantasy/horror story. I wish it had been a dystopia.

Last year, I read Lisa McMann's Wake Trilogy, which I sort of liked at first, but later came to almost abhor. Her writing drove me crazy. It's so incredibly fragmented. Everyone told me that the writing was matched to Janie's thoughts and not a sign of McMann's inability to compose a complex sentence. Well, that excuse really does not fly here. The story is told in third person and yet, oddly enough, the syntax remains choppy and composed largely of sentence fragments. This will, hopefully, be my last foray into McMann.

All that so grumpily said, Cryer's Cross was not a terrible read. I think I liked it more than I disliked it. The ending was a bit too mystical for my taste, but there was a major redeeming factor. The one thing McMann does really well: she writes really attractive, atypical male leads. And some pretty hot scenes with them, even if they remain PG, as is the case here.

I recommend this for reluctant readers, although I doubt boys would be too interested. For a book with a lot of menace lingering about, there is very little action.

"So this is where you are
And this is where I am
Somewhere between
Unsure and a hundred"