#s.a. bodeen

The Girl/Laila from The Gardener - S.A. Bodeen + Associ-sun flag edit

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The Compound by S. A. Bodeen. Rating: 2.5 Stars.

Read on January 30th.

I picked this book up a few years ago at a bookstore and it’s been in my TBR pile since then. So finishing it means another TBR veteran off the shelf. However, this was written in 2008. Now, can we imagine why this might be important? Because I read the eight page prologue and knew it was an older book. And that’s how the rest of the book comes across as well. It feels old. Jokes that are made or topics that are discussed do not age well so that just put everyone on the wrong foot from the get go.

I also had an issue with the plot twist of the book. I mean, I don’t know for sure that it’s supposed to be the plot twist when I figured it out in chapter one and it isn’t “revealed” for another 150 pages. There were a lot of obvious signs that either the main character ignored or the author thought were foreshadowing (but it can’t really be called foreshadowing when it’s written in neon lights). I wish there had been more time laying everything out for the reader. I normally don’t like exposition, but it feels necessary there. There are questions that come up for the reader that never get answered. Why was the dad like this? How did everyone not see it coming? Was the dad hiding his mental instability from everyone? If so, how was the reader able to see it so well before the characters do? I just wish I could go through and erase a lot of things that were written as foreshadowing so the author could rewrite it in a better way. That way there’s actually a sense of confusion, not understanding what’s happening, and fear for the main character’s life.

I read The Raft by S.A. Bodeen! See what I thought here:

Found on Google Images

Title: The Raft

Author: S.A. Bodeen

My Rating: ★★★

Summary: “Robie lives with her family on the Midway Atoll, a group of islands in the middle of the Pacific. After visiting her aunt on Hawaii, Robie is left to return home alone. Catching a cargo flight at the last minute, all systems are go until the plane hits nasty weather. And then the plane goes down.

And…

With today’s release of Found, the Shipwreck Island series is complete. Readers will no longer have to wonder what will happen next to the Robinson family, because all the answers will be revealed.

In school visits, I’m often asked how I came up with the creepy creatures of Shipwreck Island. There are monsters which outright scare us, mainly because they are so unexpected and unfamiliar to everything we know. But I’m the most freaked out when things seem fine, but aren’t quite. As if what’s normal has not been turned upside down, but instead, twisted a tad. A formative story for me was The Island of Dr. Moreau, with all the insidious human/animal hybrids who were close to human…yet not. Even the film Toy Story contained similarly sinister hybrids in the form of Sid’s mutants, such as the baby doll head atop a spider-like body. A sweet toy…yet not.

For the Shipwreck Island series, I went to the same place. Animals, some nice and others not, roam the island—yet none seemed to be quite… right. When the Robinsons find themselves marooned, they immediately set out to make things as comfortable as possible. Make a camp, start a fire, cook some food: make the place feel like home, even though it isn’t. They seek normalcy in a situation of discomfort and bewilderment. Certainly, I could have made their circumstances better with some lovely dolphins or pretty birds or furry sloths. But where would be the terror…er…fun in that?  

Characters need obstacles or there is no story. My obstacles just happened to have claws they shouldn’t and extra wings which didn’t belong. But to increase the tension, I also had to shake up the Robinsons’ feeling of safety. Scary things have rules we can count on. Afraid of vampires? Don’t invite them in. Terrified of sharks? Stay out of the water. But what if a shark has crocodile legs? By giving the creature the ability to walk on land, I change normal for the family. They can’t look for safety where it is typically be found. They can no longer rely on anything they know, because nothing on the island seems to follow the rules, which leaves them firmly entrenched in the unknown. And the unknown, especially on a mysterious island, is always scary.

At least, I hope I’ve made it so.