Caragh Reviews // Concentr8 by William Sutcliffe

Published - 27th August 2015
Publisher - Bloomsbury
Format - Kindle
Synopsis - In a future London, Concentr8 is a prescription drug intended to help kids with ADD. Soon every troubled teen is on it. It makes sense, doesn't it? Keep the undesirable elements in line. Keep people like us safe from people like them. What's good for society is good for everyone. Troy, Femi, Lee, Karen and Blaze have been taking Concentr8 as long as they can remember. They're not exactly a gang, but Blaze is their leader, and Troy has always been his quiet, watchful sidekick - the only one Blaze really trusts. They're not looking for trouble, but one hot summer day, when riots break out across the city, they find it. What makes five kids pick a man seemingly at random - a nobody, he works in the housing department, doesn't even have a good phone - hold a knife to his side, take him to a warehouse and chain him to a radiator? They've got a hostage, but don't really know what they want, or why they've done it. And across the course of five tense days, with a journalist, a floppy-haired mayor, a police negotiator, and the sinister face of the pharmaceutical industry, they - and we - begin to understand why ...This is a book about what how we label children. It's about how kids get lost and failed by the system. It's about how politicians manipulate them

I have genuinely dreaded having to review this book - hence it being late.
I'm also not entirely sure that my thoughts are going to come out coherently so please don't hold that against me.

The premise of this book literally blew my mind. When I read what the book was going to be about, I knew that one way or another I was going to read it. It also kind of reminded me of the Melvin Burgess book 'The Hit'. ADHD is a HUGE deal. It's sad to think that there are very few people out there that don't know somebody who has been diagnosed with it, or at least know somebody by association. It's also true that it's becoming more acceptable to label children at an earlier age. In a lot of ways that's a GREAT thing - we're able to put a name to things and help from a much earlier stage in a child's life but it's also just....not great.

With a condition like ADHD, kids are not only labelled but are judged, categorised and it's assumed that just by 4 letters, they are kids that act up and pay no attention. Concentr8 really tries to focus on that side of things - what happens when kids are labelled pre-emptively just by behaviour?

So what exactly is the reason I've been dreading this? Pretty much everything BUT the premise if i'm honest. The kids (and book) are London based and i'm sure it's a statement on the type of kids who are being targeting within the book, but the language and the way it was written was my idea of a nightmare. There were incomplete sentences, so much slang I was starting to wonder if I was actually understanding what was being said, and the constant switching between characters and stream of consciousness was way too confusing.

Despite that, I still could have enjoyed it if it wasn't for the fact that, honestly, nothing really happened. I don't feel like the story progressed at all. There were a few moments (involving the journalist) where I thought the book was going to become something wonderful and truly meaningful but it failed for me. I haven't done much research on this book so PLEASE say something if you know more, but if this book is a standalone then I would honestly say give this one a miss and pick up something more worthwhile for your time.

There were a lot of points that could have deeply been explored and made a massive impression not just upon me, but on literature as a medium. That said, I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the many footnotes and extracts from medical sources about ADHD, therapy and medication throughout the book. Those alone would have made for interesting reading if you throw out the rest of it.

Apologies to Sutcliffe but this really wasn't for me. It was a fantastic idea that never reached its potential for me. It was disappointing and bored me from start to finish.

Caragh Reviews - Shadow Web by N.M.Browne

Published - 4th February 2008
Publisher - Bloomsbury
Format - Paperback
Synopsis - Jessica Allendon is bored and Googles her name. Weirdly, she finds another girl, same age, same name, also living in London. They arrange to meet. At the designated time and place, Jess sees the girl, shock registering on both their faces as they realise they look identical. They shake hands and in that instant are catapulted into each other's worlds. Jessica finds herself somewhere which looks like the London of 50 years ago, but the year is still 2008. In this parallel London, the history is different, key war memorials are missing, and the Jessica whose life she now inhabits was involved in a dark and sinister conspiracy. Jess must convince everyone she is the same girl, at all costs, if she wants to get back to her London - alive.

Last year Brianna was working at a bookstore and so I sent her off one day with the request that she returns with 3 completely random books for me to read. This was one of them that she picked up and though it's taken me forever to actually read it, it was a good choice. The cover is so beautiful and the text and picture are slightly raised and argh just so so gorgeous. It feels a little steampunky too which is always good.

Shadow Web is set in 2008 and when Jessica Allendon googles her own name, everything changes except the year. It's a great concept, especially as so many people DO google their names and I guess in that respect it's relateable. I've always wondered if there's someone out there who shares my name (which isn't realistic I guess, my name is pretty odd!) Browne is also a new-to-me author and that's always great too. 

Strangely, I didn't find the MC very likeable and though she changes through the course of the book, I still didn't feel any kind of connection to her. However, there are other characters in the book that I really loved and their whole personas were brilliantly written. The London that Jess finds herself in is vastly different to the one that she (and we) know. Landmarks are missing, restrictions for women are in place and an abnormal amount of people are German speakers. It doesn't take much to figure out why the world is so different but the intrigue for me was how it happened in the first place. How the two Jessicas managed to swap places. Unfortunately that was the only downfall of the book, too. Though it is commented on, it's never really explained in depth and I would have loved to have known more about it. A few times in the book Jessica just glazes over things rather than explain them. 

The actual plot was great though and I thoroughly enjoyed it! I went into the book blind and came out having a great reading experience. The romance in the book isn't in your face and it develops at a good enough pace and it most definitely isn't the focus of the book, or even relevant to the plot at all. Just a nice little extra. Shadow Web adds a lot of mystery, intrigue and questions throughout the plot which kept me interested. There are a couple of good lines that comment on society but nothing so big that it feels like you're reading a great masterpiece. It's a great book and is super quick to read and doesn't really require any effort on behalf of the reader. A straightforward and enjoyable read!