Saturday, November 5, 2016

The Lifeboat Clique by Kathy Parks

Title: The Lifeboat Clique
Author: Kathy Parks
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Source: Katherine Tegen via Edelweiss
Goodreads





Some people might say that Denver had a death wish. Why else would she have dared to sneak into a Malibu beach party where she’d be surrounded by enemies, namely including her ex-BFF Abigail?

Oh yeah. Croix. Denver never thought in a million years he’d ask her out, but who was she to question this miracle of fate? Well, that wasn’t the only surprise fate had in store.

During the party a tsunami hit the coast of California, wiping out everything in its path. Denver and a handful of others escaped death by holding onto the roof of the house and were swept out to sea. Of course, one of her fellow castaways was none other than Abigail, who could barely stand the sight of her.

Now that she’s floating in the ocean, stuck on a small boat with the most popular kids in school and waiting to be rescued, Denver wonders what might kill her first-dehydration, sunstroke, or the girl she used to think of as a sister?

A hilariously dark and twisted story that sparkles with a remarkably fresh voice, The Lifeboat Clique is Kathy Park’s irreverent yet insightful novel about how to survive in the most unthinkable circumstances.
Review by Nara

The Lifeboat Clique is pitched as Life of Pi meets Mean Girls, and I can't say I disagree with that comparison. However, it unfortunately didn't quite reach the standards that I would have expected for such a crossover.

I think the main problem I had with the novel was that it seemed very unrealistic. The more I thought about things, the more holes I found. It was kind of one of those books where you can't really think about your suspension of disbelief and try to just enjoy the novel as is (which I obviously had difficulty with). One of these things was, I don't know, surely you can put aside your petty differences when you're fighting for survival, rather than being super annoying and unhelpful. One of the "popular kids" in the boat literally doesn't do anything useful except criticise everyone else (mostly the protagonist) and generally being quite irritating.

Main character Denver used to be best friends with Abigail, but something happened and she becomes one of the "popular kids". To be honest, when I discovered what had happened, I felt like it was completely reasonable of Abigail to have been angry about it. Friends just shouldn't do that to each other. I guess it was actually interesting to have a main character that did something horrible and to see how the two settle their differences. Speaking of, the flashbacks throughout the novel: I could see what the author was trying to do with them but I wasn't really invested in the past timeline and just wanted to see what was happening in the present.

The ending was quite anticlimactic and instead of finishing the book feeling satisfied, I felt more like I wanted to delete the book off my ebook library and never read it again.

So all in all, would I recommend the book? I don't know; I know there are some people who enjoyed the novel particularly for its humour. So maybe.

It was okay
Ratings
Overall: 4/10
Plot: 2/5
Writing: 3/5
Characters: 2/5
Cover: 3/5