Book Review: The Sham by Ellen Allen

A bit of luck led me to The Sham.  Searching through Twitter writers, I found Ellen Allen.  She posted a link to an article on writing book reviews, which I found especially helpful because I'm making it a priority to write more book reviews.  It must've been fate.  Or just dumb luck.

So here are my thoughts on The Sham:

• A murder and love story wrapped into one.  I'm not sure what genre this falls into because it has characteristics of Young Adult, New Adult, and Psychological Thriller.  I tend to like books better when they cross over genres, and The Sham does this.
• It is set in rural England, which I enjoyed.  Being from the states, I like the nuances of life in another country.  Most of these nuances come in the form of vocabulary (crisps instead of chips, mum instead of mom etc.), but there are fundamental attitude differences I found intriguing with the characters because of the difference in cultural upbringing.
• I'd describe the writing style as fresh and snarky.  The Sham is written from a 1st person perspective, which gives us insight into the attitude of the narrator.  Ellen Allen does a good job portraying the story through her main character Emily, who is a seventeen-year old girl with a seventeen-year old attitude.  The writing style is fast-paced, and the plot is driven forward primarily through the mysterious circumstances surrounding a handful of questionable characters who are involved, somehow, in a murderous plot.
• The characters are dynamic and strange.  Characterization occurs mainly through the interactions between the main players.  For the most part, I had a clear understanding of each character and the motivations that drove him/her.  A few peripheral characters confused me and I found myself re-reading passages in an attempt to better understand their behaviors.  This may be because it is a mystery, and so I read with particular attention to detail as I tried to figure out who was doing what.   I may have been over-analyzing, which caused my experience to bog down in parts.  But these occurrences didn't stop me from finishing the novel.
• The story builds to a climax that brings together all the characters, and all the mystery, into one place for a resolution that stays true to the components that make up the novel.  For a mystery to be successful, the crime must make sense as well as intrigue.  The Sham accomplishes this.

I don't read many psychological thrillers.  It isn't my preferred genre.  Despite that, I felt myself wanting to know more about the story and the characters, and ultimately it was that curiosity that kept me turning pages.