Trust Exercise

I have yet to hide an entire review due to spoilers, but I felt I had to do so for this book. This novel is unlike anything I've ever read, and while I loved parts of it, I absolutely hated others. The first half of the book tells the story of Sarah and David, two high schoolers who couple and decouple amidst the sometimes crazy circumstances of their lives, including their cultish school for the arts. At page 131, the perspective changes, and it is revealed that the preceding pages were an excerpt from a quasi-autobiographical novel written by the “Sarah” character. This was an interesting twist, and I initially enjoyed this next section of the novel, which is written from the perspective of one of the minor characters from the first part. Unfortunately, this portion of the book climaxes with the narrator, “Karen,” shooting a man 14 years her senior with whom she had a relationship as a child. While I would normally applaud such an action, “Karen” went about this by switching a prop gun in a play for a real gun, which is probably the laziest writing I have ever read, and is the sole reason I am giving this book three stars instead of five. The last section of the book was very good; it deepened the mystery and made the whole thing worth reading. Overall, I would recommend this novel.