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Book Summary:
When Jessica Day moves from Chicago to Bixby, Oklahoma, she has no idea that she is about to find a whole new world opened to her - a world in which there is a twenty-fifth hour to every day that has been compressed down into a mere moment. The world stands frozen during this blue time when the slithers and darklings come out to play, and only those born within seconds of midnight are able to move freely through this time, each with there own talent. They call themselves midnighters, and Jessica is one of them.
Book Review:
I was first introduced to Scott Westerfeld by his Uglies series (if you like dystopian novels and haven't read them, I would definitely recommend picking them up). I think he is an awesome story-teller and a pretty good writer. In The Secret Hour he does a great job of introducing the main characters and giving the reader just enough information about each of them to feel informed but still intrigued. I loved the concept of the book; the idea that there is this secret hour in which only a few people can move about is really interesting, and Westerfeld does a great job describing the back story for why this hour exists. I also really liked the fact that each midnighter had his or her own special ability that exists only during the blue time; a large part of the story was trying to figure out what Jessica's ability was and why the darklings and slithers wanted her dead so badly.
As I stated above, this is the first book in a series, and you can definitely tell. This is actually my biggest issue with the book as a whole. I honestly felt like a good bit of this story was just setting up the reader for the second novel. The buildup to the climax was really slow, and then I felt like the ending was rushed because so much of this book was spent giving us a lot of information on the blue time, like back story and rules the characters must follow. To me, all of this felt like Westerfeld was filling us in more because it would be useful for the second book than this one, even uncovering Jessica's ability seemed more like it was a plot device to move us to the next novel than the climax of this one.
I also found it slightly unbelievable that there were five midnighters in the small town of Bixby, and on top of that, they were all in high school within one year of each other. If the town is as small as the author makes it seem, it's unrealistic that there would be five people, in general, that were all born close enough to midnight to be able to walk freely in the secret hour. Stepping off of that near impossibility, if there would happen to be five of them, how plausible is it that they are all teenagers? How is there no adults who are awake during this time? I mean, there have to be more adults in the town than teens, so statistically there would be a much greater chance of there being five adults who were born around midnight than there would be of five teens being born around midnight. I realize that this is splitting hairs and that I probably thought way to much about this, but logically this makes absolutely no sense to me, even in the realm of science fiction and fantasy.
Overall, I really liked this novel. It was a easy read and a fun story. I would definitely recommend it, though more for preteens and teens than adults. There is minimal, if any, swearing and no sexual references other than kissing. Obviously there is a little bit of a spooky/supernatural/science fiction-y feel to the book, but I personally didn't have an issues with it and would have no problems allowing my young teen (if I had one) to read this.
My Rating: 7/10
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