The Returners , by Gemma Malley

Published 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

ISBN

140880090X (ISBN13: 9781408800904)

original title

The Returners

characters

Will Freeman

 

Will Hodge is being followed by people who insist they know him, though he does not remember them, and his terrifying dreams have begun spilling over from night-time into day. He is also a witness in a murder trial and is coping with the death of his mother. Life couldn't get much more difficult. Or could it?

Slowly, Will discovers that his past is not all that he thought it was, and the people following him aren't really strangers. They are Returners, and they have an important message about some truths Will has forgotten - terrible truths he may wish he had never known..

 

My Review

The novel itself was a little confusing in some places because there just seemed to be a lot going on at one time, meaning that there were far to many mysteries to solve at any given time. I think there was a well thought out idea and plot here that, perhaps with a little tweaking, could make a highly thought provoking book. But at the moment, for something that is not very long, it seems like a lot of ideas crammed into one thing and I wonder if perhaps it would have been better to spread it out a little more and give the book that room for it to develop an overally depth. I did like the characters though at times I found myself getting bored, because there never really seemed to be any real drama going on. It just seemd to take a long time to actually get to the point of it, and whilst in someways it was an advantage to the book, it also had its disadvantages in that I was finding myself getting bored.

 

I felt that the characters were not as well developed as they could have been. you really only got to know one of them and I just felt that all the others had so much more potential to them. I would have been interested for example, to have learnt more about Yan, Claire, Patrick and his dad. I feel that all the characters clearly had an important role to play here within the story, but not all of them were given the chance to claim the spotlight and that means you just wonder... what was the whole point of putting them in the story in the first place? Compared to her over novels that I have read, this is probably my least favorite. There is a lot of room for potential, a lot of room for it to grow, and just because it does not suit my likings is not to say that It won't suit someone elses. Afterall we all enjoy different type of books, otherwise there would be no point in different genres.

 

My rating