Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Shift - a review by George Morejon

Shift by Jennifer Bradbury
**** stars

Shift is a book about 2 boys who travel across America, from West Virginia to Oregon, on bicycles after they graduate high school. Chris is the responsible of one of the two, planning out everything they pack up and managing it all. Win, Chris' friend, is the irresponsible kid that gets himself in trouble all the time.

They're having a great time on their ride at first. The ride's feeling good instead of hurting, they're doing crazy fun things like jumping into every body of water they see, and they're camping out under the stars most nights. One day they even meet the nicest people on a farm out in rural Montana and spend a night there. It sounds like a great trip, and it is, but Win goes missing at the end and nobody knows where he's gone. Chris is just starting school now, and has to deal with Win's overbearing father threatning him, along with FBI agents asking about what happened to Win.

I thought this was a good book that only took ~4 hours to read. The storytelling is broken up with a chapter of current time (school, FBI agents) and a chapter of their trip together over the summer. At first I didn't like that, but after about 10 chapters it really started to grow on me and it made both parts better. I got a feeling that both of them discovered som new things about themselves, but taken in a somewhat unusual way. I was always guessing what happened to Win through the whole book.

6 comments:

TheBookNurse said...

Sounds interesting and I want to know what happened to Win! I also like how you always indicate about how long the book took you to read.

Bryce Foster said...

this sounds like another great mystery. Also since i am into the outdoors and biking in general this review caught my interest. good job!

Hope Austin said...

This sounds promising. Hopefully this one doesn't dissappoint me as much as the last few books I read about missing teens.

Amy Lyon said...

Sounds too much like a guy novel for my tastes. But Hope, if you're going to read it, you can tell me if its worth the approximate 4 hours(if you would be so kind). : )

Ian Zig. said...

That doesn't really sound like something I'd enjoy reading... I'm more of a fantasy guy.. no pun intended =)

Aspen Gates said...

I definately cannot wait to read this book.