Time Bomb | Book Review

Time Bomb

Written by: Joelle Charbonneau
Number of Pages: 352

Average Rating: 3.66 / 5 stars
My Rating: 3 / 5 stars

Published: March 13, 2018
Read in July 2018


Summary According to Goodreads

A congressman's daughter who has to be perfect. A star quarterback with a secret. A guy who's tired of being ignored. A clarinet player who's done trying to fit in. An orphaned rebel who wants to teach someone a lesson. A guy who wants people to see him, not his religion. 

They couldn't be more different, but before the morning's over, they'll all be trapped in a school that's been rocked by a bombing. When they hear that someone inside is the bomber, they'll also be looking to one another for answers. 


My Thoughts

This novel was one of my most anticipated releases of 2018, but I was quite disappointed - maybe I hyped myself up for it too much. In terms of  the plot and characters I would say that this novel rates at more of a two star, but because it was such a quick read I had to bump it up. 

Joelle Charbonneau is most well-known in the YA community for her "Testing" trilogy, but I am one of the few who haven't read those books. I enjoyed her writing style in this novel and found it to read very quickly, however I didn't like the way that she told the story. It felt very flat, and I never felt any rushes of adrenaline or anxiety wondering if any of them weren't going to make it out. While reading this novel I also had a fairly strong idea who the bomber was, and was not at all surprised by the ending. I think that it was because we read from all five of their perspectives that we didn't get that suspicious thrill, and instead I think having a single perspective would have made the reveal more shocking. 

In novels such as this it is so important to have strong, developed, and distinct characters - which this one didn't. I felt disconnected from them all, and was more annoyed by how generic and cliché it all was. Each of these five characters was a walking stereotype, a couple of them were irrelevant to the development of the plot, and none of them displayed any type of complexity.

Overall, I appreciate the author's attempt at writing about a controversial and important subject, but this fell too flat for me. As I said earlier, I was not surprised by the reveal of the bomber, but am still confused as to their motivations. The ending was just a quick info-dump to get it over with, but there were some aspects that don't add up for me.