How We Hide, by Marthe Jocelyn

What We Hide, by Marthe Jocelyn

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Contemporary

Rating: 2/5 stars









Goodreads Summary: Americans Jenny and her brother, Tom, are off to England: Tom to university, to dodge the Vietnam draft, Jenny to be the new girl at a boarding school, Illington Hall. This is Jenny's chance to finally stand out, so accidentally, on purpose, she tells a lie. But in the small world of Ill Hall, everyone has something to hide. Jenny pretends she has a boyfriend. Robbie and Luke both pretend they don't. Brenda won't tell what happened with the school doctor. Nico wants to hide his mother's memoir. Percy keeps his famous dad a secret. Oona lies to everyone. Penelope lies only to herself.

Deftly told from multiple points of view in various narrative styles, including letters and movie screenplays, What We Hide is provocative, honest, often funny, and always intriguing.

Review:

  Yeeeee. -.-

  I expected the best from this novel. I wanted a contemporary novel with so much happening, but all I got was this BORING book. One minute I thought that something big was going to happen, the next I was completely out. I was confused with what was happening. What should've I expected?

   So the plot started off really well. When I was at 20%, I thought that I would give this a four start rating, but eventually it slowed down and nothing really changed. This is one of those cheesy boarding school stories, just wanted to let 'ya know. 

   So many POVs are hard to deal with, even if you know who's telling the story. There were just too many here to keep up with. I don't even know some of the characters' reasoning and point to be in this book, and they had this huge POV. It was kind of dumb because the different POVs were written in different formats, which made me laugh because I could tell that the author wanted to "change it up." Aha, letter format? PLAY FORMAT?! Don't kill me of laughing. 

   

    The only UP was the beginning and end. Those two things were the probably only good things, but they captivated me, so that's all that matters.

    Like I said before, I really disliked the characters, especially Penelope and Alec. Yuck. 

  And this is where I say that I don't understand what the author was going for because I don't really understand why she wrote her characters like that.

  ... This was a really "nothing special" kind of book. I didn't see any specialty in it, and I'm disappointed because I really was expecting better.