carolesrandomlife

This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books.

I liked this book a lot. The story grabbed me right away and I was completely hooked. This is the first time that I have read anything by Stephanie Kuehn but I quickly found that she is a fabulous storyteller. I ended up reading this book over two nights and really never wanted to put it down because I had to know what happened. I had a lot of fun reading this book.

This story is told by Ben. I really liked the way the story unfolded through Ben's recollection after the event. From the book's summary, we know that Ben does something to Rose but as I read the story I just couldn't figure it out. Ben is really a likeable guy. He's not perfect and doesn't always know the answers but I just couldn't see him causing harm to anyone. So I had to keep reading to find out what really happened.

The book takes Ben, his teacher, and a few more high school students on an overnight hiking trip. I was a little surprised by how much this group of kids got away with on the trip. Ben is the teacher's assistant for the trip so he has a bit of responsibility but he doesn't hesitate to have a little fun himself. There is a bit of high school drama which I really didn't mind in this story. It felt realistic and really helped show who each of the characters really were.

There are a few surprising twists in the story and a whole lot of excitement before everything is over. I really had no idea what was going to happen to everyone as the story moved along. I ended up feeling for these kids as they tried to figure out how to handle the situation they found themselves in. 

I would recommend this book to others. It was a really exciting story that was really hard to put down. I definitely plan to read more of Stephanie Kuehn's work in the future.

I received an advance reader edition of this book from Dutton Books for Young Readers via First to Read.

Initial Thoughts
This book really surprised me. When I first downloaded this book from First to Read, it kept freezing my tablet up and just giving me an all around rough time. I decided to see if it was behaving any better last night and while the file was still a bit temperamental, I was willing to fight my way through the book because the story completely grabbed me. I loved Ben's voice in this book and was never really sure what would happen next.