2 min to read

Time Bomb

Title
Time Bomb
Author
Joelle Charbonneau
Published date
13/02/2019
Pages
352
Publisher
YA!

Time Bomb written by Joelle Charbonneau is a YA mystery/thriller. We have six young people with a different background who got stuck together at school when the bombs are detonated. To make a plot more captivating, on the first pages, we read that one of them has set up the explosives themselves.

The book is a short novel. Each chapter has about two to four pages, so you can read it quickly. And from the very beginning, you will be hooked. I really liked how the author a story with a chapter from POV each of the characters, and they all go to school with a backpack and mysterious plan to change their life forever. But to learn more details about it, you’ll have to keep reading and try to guess who exactly has a bomb in their bag.

All the characters are interesting and complicated. We have a nice picture of American society. There is a school star, a popular football captain; another sportsman, who plan to come out about being gay; a congressman daughter who is little miss perfect. On the other side, we have a very talented, but overweight musician, who has been bullied frequently; a Muslim boy, who wish that people would not judge him on the base of his religion; and an orphaned rebel, angry at everyone who keeps ignoring his dire situation. This is a very explosive mix of personalities, as you can imagine. But they would have to forget their prejudice and cooperate to escape before the school building collapses on their heads.

The author created not an only exciting story but also showed us authentic social problems: self-acceptance, perceiving others through social labels, trying to fulfil other’s expectations, religious and racial prejudices. It is crucial to stop for a moment to think if sometimes we too are judging others unfairly. No one has only one dimension, we all consist of more than our faith or appearance. You could easily write the whole tomes about these problems, and this what the author mentions are only the tip of an iceberg. But maybe it is enough to consider our own behaviour towards other people.

The book is very easy to read, but what I miss was something that would make it amazing. I deduced the culprit quite quickly, and I was right. But explanation about motives was satisfying, and there were no inaccuracies there.

If you like tense YA thrillers, you can give this book a shot!

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