Bookish Thoughts - The Pledge

A review thing that isn't really a review... thing.

I brought this book just a couple of days ago now on a bit of a whim. I'd seen it many times on the shelves but it had never really caught me eye. I'm unfortunately a bit of a book cover judge. Not in the sense that I'm drawn to pretty covers. It's more the fact that I'm pushed away by covers that seem too cliche. But anyway, that's going off topic and is something for another day. The main point of this was The Pledge and my need to quickly talk about it.

Let's get down to basic information first. It's written by Kimberly Derting, who apparently wrote The Body Finder series. This other series has been recommended to me by a friend before so when I saw the authors name, I thought I'd give it a look. It's stated to be a dystopian fantasy and that was the thing that really got me interested. As the novel I'm attempting to write is dystopia, I've been trying to be a good little author and read around my genre before starting my writing, and this was a sub genre I've never seen before. Perhaps I just haven't read enough, but that was the case. And the final tipping point was this: I read the prologue. It was short so I didn't feel too bad about it. Sometimes, reading the first pages feels like a betrayal of the book to me, but other times, I have to do it. I wanted to know whether the book would be worth reading and the prologue intrigued me. So I said "Let's go for it!"

At first, I thought I had been highly mistaken. It had very simple prose with a typical dystopian opening - Girl introduces reader to their society, days-in-the-life are shown, aspects that horrify us but are normal to said character etc etc... This lasted for around 100 odd pages. Maybe a few more. Then, as I was beginning to see the odd glimmer of hope in a few occasional beautifully worded sentences, a bomb was dropped. Quite literally. Things began to pick up a little pace and it stopped me from putting the book down.

Now usually, I'm one of those readers that correctly guesses much of what is going to happen in a novel. Maybe it's that the novel is too cliche or maybe I just subconsciously skip ahead, but what are supposed to be dramatic plot twists are usually lack luster because I've figured them out. I don't like this but I live with it. It's definitely not something I like doing. So when a book gives me a plot twist that is actually an unexpected plot twist, I get very excited. A this book certainly did. I don't know how I didn't spot it but I didn't and when I read it, it thrilled me. And then I was hit with another. And then one more after that. I'm pretty sure, however, that what was meant to be the most dramatic unveiling wasn't as effective to me. But oh well.

All in all, it got me thinking about what makes a good plot twist when your writing it. Is it something that you throw in there when things get too dull to shake the readers up? Or is it something that you work to conceal throughout the beginning of the novel? In other words, are your plot twist planned? With this one, I'm glad it happened, because otherwise, I may have stopped reading, a rare occurrence for me. Now with only a chapter or two to go, I hope Kimberly Derting can plot twist me again.

06/11/13 UPDATE: She did.