Publisher's Weekly Review
Shreve's novels (Body Surfing; The Weight of Water) benefit from propulsive plots, and her mixed latest, with its timely theme of debauchery among children of privilege, does not lack in this regard. The first paragraph foreshadows a tragedy in which three marriages are destroyed, the lives of three students at a private school in Vermont are ruined, and death claims an innocent victim. The precipitating event is a sex tape involving three members of the boys' basketball team and a freshman girl. Beginning with an account of the debacle by the Avery School's then headmaster, and segueing to the voices of the participants in the orgy, plus their parents and others touched by the scandal, the narrative explores the widening consequences of a single event. Shreve's character delineation is astute, and the novel's moral questions--ranging from the boys' behavior to the headmaster's breach of legal ethics to the guilt of those involved in the death--are salient if heavy-handed, while the female characters are "wicked" in the way women have always been stereotypically portrayed. The novel is clever, but the revolving cast of narrators often feels predictable and forced, keeping the novel on the near side of credible. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Recounting a student sex scandal at a prestigious Vermont private academy, this explosive novel from Shreve (Body Surfing) is more transfixing than a multicar pileup on the interstate. Told from the perspectives of the students involved, the school administrator, the parents, and numerous bystanders, the story keeps unraveling as it slingshots back and forth in time. At each revelation, readers keep hoping that things will turn out differently, that there will be survivors, despite the carnage before their eyes. Yet that one night can never be undone: "A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go." Shreve arrows in on many targets--underage drinking, instant exposure via the Internet, familial expectations, youthful insecurities, and peer pressure, among them--as she flawlessly weaves a tale that is mesmerizing, hypnotic, and compulsive. No one walks away unscathed, and that includes the reader. Highly recommended. [Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/08.]--Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
