With this book, it’s kind of hard to find a balance between not telling you too much and thereby spoiling the book in case you decide to read it and telling enough to make you understand it and want to read it, too, because, it is really recommendable after all. The author and the title might sound familiar to you if you’ve read my Day 6: Favourite Series post, but today, it is specifically about the third book, that is
Checkmate by Malorie Blackman,
which is the saddest and scariest book of the Noughts and Crosses series, I think. I don’t usually read horror books or thrillers with murderers, they’re much too scary with all the blood and psychopaths and murderers. When I read something really scary, I’m not only frightened while reading, but it stays in my head, making me jump at every little noise for the next few days. Maybe because I imagine the things I read so vividly, I don’t know. With Checkmate, though, I didn’t expect it to be scary from the beginning. I knew that book one and two were sometimes violent and included graphic language, but you wouldn’t get more than occasional goose bumps. But in the third sequel, there was so much hate and brutality and hopelessness that I really gave me the creeps. On the one hand, I was scared for the characters and about the terrifying things that happened to them. On the other hand, it also frightened me that the book sometimes didn’t seem so far from reality as you’d like it. And if a book is realistic, it usually makes it even more worrying.
A brief description of the plot (without giving away too much, I hope): For the most part, Checkmate is told from Callie Rose perspective. The sixteen-year-old girl has a complicated relationship with her mother, thinks her dead father was a murderer and rapist and as if this is not enough enough, she has also got boy trouble. The only one who she feels she can talk to is her uncle, a wanted criminal who tries to convince her to join a terrorist organisation and additionally infiltrates her with lies about and hate against those she actually loves. The author creates a teenage character who doesn’t know the first thing about being loved and accepted the way she is. Her only way out of it is resorting to violence.
As you might guess, the book is not one where you scream out loud because you’re so shocked, but it is causes a fear that makes your chest grow cold. It makes you wish very very hard that what happens in the book will never ever happen to your own children and family. Not even to your worst enemy, I’d say.
mpurk 