Hello all, welcome to my third blog post. Anyways, I want to talk about a book I read recently called 14 Ways to Die by Vincent Ralph, as the title states.
So, 14 Ways to Die follows the life of Jess (I don’t remember the last name) as she struggles with her mother’s murder and attempts to bring justice to her mom by sharing her pain and suffering with the internet. The story follows the idea that there’s an infamous serial killer who goes around and kills middle-aged women, carving a number into their abdomens via blade as a way to “mark” them, the number increasing by one with each murder. And this poor girl's mother was number 1. The rest of the book follows a typical plot for young-adult (YA) murder mysteries, where the protagonist gets some signal revealing some game-changing information, and the protagonist attempts to avenge some dead person by bringing the culprit to justice. This leads to a "final showdown" in the second to last chapter.
Anywho, time for an honest to good book review. So, I thought the book was quite an enthralling story, using an interesting piece of evidence to solve the murder. But, as I said before, the book was somewhat bland in its plot, following the same storyline as every other YA murder mystery out there.
1) Introduction to protagonist, characters, and why the protagonist investigates.
2) The protagonist (usually a girl) investigates the crime to find some shocking truths with her (usually) male friend.
3) Final showdown with criminal and criminal gets arrested.
The book also features a "final girl", as does a vast majority of all murder-mystery/horror/thriller novels, movies or TV shows. A "final girl" is a female protagonist that is found in these death-related storylines, and is the one to confront the killer. Some famous examples of said protagonists would be Ripley from the famous "Alien" franchise, or Sydney from "Scream". I wish the YA murder mystery books would deviate a bit from the "final girl" trope, since the majority of the books I've read have featured one. Even the novel I'm reading now, They Wish They Were Us by Jessica Goodman featuring Jill.
To be honest, I wish some of these YA murder mysteries could have some variety in plot rather than just an interesting premise and a bland plot. But nevertheless, I found it an interesting book and I give it an honest 7/10.
Well, that’s it for my book review of 14 Ways to Die by Vincent Ralph. Bye bye!
It's kind of surprising that this book would have a bland plot. After reading the title, I thought the book would be incredibly interesting. Although it follows the same plot of other mystery books, the way the serial killer marks them and the way that Jess wants to find out everything seems very interesting. I will add this to my book wish list!
ReplyDeleteHi Maddox, I really liked reading your blog post. I haven't read many murder mystery novels, so all of the regular murder mystery cliches that you listed don't really bother me all that much. Plus, the fact that you kept the main part of the book, which I assume is Jess solving the mystery, makes me want to see how it plays out in detail. I also want to see how the other characters in this book help Jess through this, like Jess's male friend whom she discovered these shocking truths about. And since the book's title is called 14 Ways to Die, I infer that this number is referring to the number of women this serial killer murdered. It's also cool to think that the killer took their lives in different ways. Great job!
ReplyDeleteLike Marshall, I am also a little surprised that the book is bland. I have been dragged into the world of weird murders and chains of deaths where the killer leaves their mark in a way. When reading the summary you gave, I got excited about the book and it didn't sound basic, but now I am not too sure. Do you think I should still check it out?
ReplyDeleteHi Mattox! I haven't heard of this book, and I'm a bit surprised that it turned out to be so cookie-cutter plain! The premise sounds SO interesting but that ending seems to be the opposite. Your writing is great though, and if I find this book I would for sure want to read it!
ReplyDeleteHi Mattox! This seems like a really interesting book. I think that it would be super fun to read but I'm surprised that you think that the plot was bland. I'll definitely have to read this one soon.
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