Crosscut

Gripping. Terrifying. Romantic. And funny. You’re thinking it’s a strange combination aren’t you? Meg Gardiner’s Crosscut is all of these things but it works.

Evan Delaney realises that a staggering amount of her old class mates have dies young. She has to figure out why they all died and then who is killing them. She get thrown into so much danger she almost breaks when she finds that she is also a target for the man who butchered Kelly Colfax. Now she’s on a mission to save her own life as well as the rest of her class metes. Class reunions can be a killer.

Kathleen Evan Delaney’s character is a character like no other. Gardiner has created such a great depth in her it’s like she’s a real person. From being strong when she’s dealing with the death of her friends to having the strength to put up with her much hated cousin Taylor, who owns a lingerie brand (enter the humour – enough said), putting up with her divorced parents and keeping a relationship going and keeping friends calm all at the same time, she has a lot on her plate. She experiences every emotion possible from sheer elation to absolutely terrified and so sad she can barely keep her self together, I cried! That’s how easy it is to empathise with every character.

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Jesse Blackburn, Evan’s partner, is committed to keeping Evan safe, but with her determination and stubbornness working against him he as a mountain to climb. There’s just as much depth to Jesse as there is Evan. Frustration pours out of him at times when he curses himself from being wheelchair bound, anger erupts when Phil, Evens father, asks the impossible of him, pain at seeing Evan upset, pained and in danger

Coyote… I can’t say much about him or I’d give the story away but he’s a new kind of evil.

There’s the same depth, and constant attention to detail with all the action, description and the emotions that are being portrayed the whole way throughout the book. I was blown away the first time I read Crosscut and I’ve been blown away again. The gore, the romance, the mystery. It so well constructed that the really important connections between some of the characters don’t jump out at you until the crucial moment.

This is a book that I thoroughly enjoyed, even though parts of the story that are from Coyote’s point of view are quite often… well they contain blood baths, I think that sums it up. Not on for the faint hearted – the first chapter is gory, and are so many parts after that. Then there’s the tension. The waiting on the edge to see what will happen. At times I was on the edge of my seat about to fall off but too gripped to do anything about it. At one point I swear I held my breath for about 40 seconds as my eyes skated over the words as fast as the characters hearts raced.

In 5 words: Gripping. Un-put-downable. Heart-wrenching. Hair-raising. Emotional.

By: Abz
21/08/08