Thursday, October 5, 2017

Review: Merrett's Gift by Ian Mitchell-Gill




Merrett’s Gift
by Ian Mitchell-Gill
Publication Date: June 3rd 2016
Publisher: FriesenPress
Find This Book: Merrett’s Gift
Rating: 3.5/5




I was given a copy of this book by the author in exchange for an honest review. 

I’m not going to lie, this book had a slow start. Why? Because the author tackled the challenging prospect of 6 (quickly down to 5) main characters and Merrett who I assumed was the main character wasn’t actually introduced until like page 80. The slowness comes with the prospect of lots of information getting flung at the reader from all sides about all topics. The POV floated from character to character. It was done in a super cool way format-wise, but this means it takes a lot longer to get attached to the characters since you are not getting to know and bonding strongly with any one character. It was a unique approach which I thought was really cool. Unfortunately, it meant that it took the first 150 pages or so for me to get really into the story. However, once I was into it I was *really* into it!

Imagine some super talented angsty teens with a wholesome mentor-mentee relationship attend a high-tech spy school. That’s this book. It was even more heart-warming finding out that this book was written chapter by chapter for the author’s own students and is now something they are sharing with a larger audience (aka me). I was a bit skeptical with some of the student behavior, as it’s extremely different from how my friends and I acted in middle school and high school, but I’m sure his students know better than I and of course there may be some behavioral differences as well being from different countries.

The most interesting part of the book was the 25-years-later epilogue. As there is a book two, I was pretty shocked! I’m genuinely intrigued as to what book two could possibly be about. There’s currently not a book description on Goodreads and I haven’t read the back cover yet, but I know I’m in for a plot-twist filled adventure! I’m hoping for a bit of improvement in the writing (while the plot was action packed and awesome, this story was a bit of tell-don’t-show) and I will be sure to update you all soon about my read of Book 2: Merrett’s Choice!

*Side note. Pretty sure Lydia is ace? But also it's hard to really get backstory and details about any one character when there are five MC's. My interpretation however is that Lydia is ace and I am I prepared to fight about it.