Ten - Review

Ten

By: Gretchen McNeil

Published: September 18th 2012 by Balzer + Bray

294 pages

Source: Borrowed from my SNL, Holly @ Words Fueled by Love

( Goodreads | Amazon )

Goodreads description--SHHHH!

Don't spread the word!

Three-day weekend. Party at White Rock House on Henry Island.

You do NOT want to miss it.

It was supposed to be the weekend of their lives—an exclusive house party on Henry Island. Best friends Meg and Minnie each have their reasons for being there (which involve T.J., the school’s most eligible bachelor) and look forward to three glorious days of boys, booze and fun-filled luxury.

But what they expect is definitely not what they get, and what starts out as fun turns dark and twisted after the discovery of a DVD with a sinister message: Vengeance is mine.

Suddenly people are dying, and with a storm raging, the teens are cut off from the outside world. No electricity, no phones, no internet, and a ferry that isn’t scheduled to return for two days. As the deaths become more violent and the teens turn on each other, can Meg find the killer before more people die? Or is the killer closer to her than she could ever imagine?

Can I just say up front how much I disliked Minnie? Yeah, yeah, I know she has bipolar disorder in the book and all and come to find out, she's been off her meds for a while. But that doesn't make her any easier to like. I cringed away from her the entire time. Something about my personality rebels against super-emotionally needy people, bipolar disorder or not. I run for the hills. Meg actually makes a comment about how exhausting the weekend is going to be with Vivian (I think it was Vivian, but it might have been Lori) around, but I wanted so bad to scream at her that the exhausting one is her friend Minnie. Guys seriously, you don't understand how much I struggle with this in real life. *sigh* Moving on...

I don't read thriller/killer/mystery stuff very often, but I was pleasantly surprised with Ten. Knowing ahead of time that there's doom and gloom ahead of these teens from the get-go, the beginning felt very ominous. Even from the ferry ride over to the island, Gretchen McNeil does a great job placing some foreshadowing references that gets you psyched from the very beginning.

Despite trying to stay ahead of the game and figure out who the killer is, I was just as confused as Meg was and somehow fell into all the traps of "who-done-it" that she did. Especially when we find out who the real killer is.

Overall, I enjoyed Ten and read most of in one sitting. It did, however, serve to only reinforce my deep fear of emotionally unstable people--as well as emotionally delusional people. (Run away people! Seriously!) Ten gets 3.5 Stars and served up at least one night of frightful dreams where I was on the run from a serial killer.

Have you read Ten? What did you think? Let me know!