Title: Num8ers
Author: Rachel Ward
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic Inc., 325 Pages (February 1st 2010)
From: Big Honcho Media
Synopsis: Whenever Jem meets someone new, no matter who, as soon as she looks into their eyes, a number pops into her head. That number is a date: the date they will die.
Burdened with such an awful awareness, Jem avoids relationships. Until she meets Spider, another outsider, and takes a chance. But while they’re waiting to ride the Eye Ferris wheel, Jem notices that all the other tourists in line flash the same number. Today’s number. Today’s date. Terrorists are going to attack London. Jem’s world is about to explode!
Review: 3 Stars - First off, I almost didn’t finish reading Numbers. It kept me forever waiting for something to happen. I never felt that I connected with either of the characters until I’d say the last few pages. Then I finally felt like Jem was or could be a real person, who was more then the hard shell she put up around her.
After I finished reading, I figured a few things out, that the parts of the book that dragged for me, needed to drag for the end result to have the affect on me that it did. To be able to really see just what the message of this book was, there needed to be all that came before it. At least for me to be able to understand things that is.
The message is finally clear in the last few pages and I’m sure there are other readers out there who will have the same reaction I did. I don’t want to tell anyone because it will give too much away.
Jem is such a strong 15 year old girl that sometimes that strong nature gets in the way. She tries to stay away from everyone for her fear of the numbers that she knows are the dates people will die, she just doesn’t understand why she can see them or what they really mean.
Along the way she allows herself to connect with a fellow classmate Spider. After witnessing a horrible event, they run. Most of this story is of the two of these characters as they flee from London. Oh, and that’s another thing I loved about this book. It’s all set in England. Some who aren’t familiar to British terms or slang might be a little confused, but don’t let that bother you. With the internet it’s easy to look things up to understand what the various things mean.
Jem and Spider somehow fit together. They are both so different from each other and yet they work. At the end of the book I was rooting for them in their relationship and in their troubles with the police.
As I said before, there’s a bigger picture to this whole story, it just took this reader awhile to get there. If it wasn’t for the ending I don’t think, no correction - I would not have been able to give it the star rating that I did.
If you’re just picking this book up and want to give up, keep reading. If your hearing mixed reviews, give it a try; just don’t give up on it. The message at the end is well worth it. I’ll be reading the sequel – Numbers 02. The Chaos, what about you?
*Check back here on wednesday for a change to win a copy of this book!
FTC Disclaimer: I did not pay for this book, nor have I been compensated at all in any way or means for reading and writing this review.
