By Caroline B. Cooney
Summary:
The novel Fatality written by Caroline Cooney tells the tale of Rose Lymond and her precious diary. When Rose went to a sleep over at Angelica Lofft's summer estate she expected to enjoy herself and do things she did not often get to do. Someone ended up dead that weekend and Rose's diary holds a horrible secret. It is four years later and the police have reopened the murder case. They take Rose's diary in for analyzing. Rose will not have this; there is something in her diary that no one can read. So, she steals her diary back and flushes these last few entries down the toilet. Rose claims she does not know anything about the murder and vows to keep silent. Rose's silence is not enough and someone tries to run her over. Someone can no longer trust Rose with this secret and will do anything to keep her from revealing it.
Other books by this author:
The Face on the Milk Carton
Emergency Room
Driver’s Ed
The Voice on the Radio
Losing Christina: Snow
Losing Christina: Fire
Losing Christina: Fog
The Stranger
3 comments:
Review #2:
Ms. Raniere
January 17, 2006
A Kid's Review
In the novel, Fatality, by Caroline B. Cooney, Rose is caught in an intriguing police investigation. When the book begins, we meet Rose, a young girl who is contemplating stealing her diary back from the police officers who took it. What precious words are written in the diary, we don't know, but they must be important. Rose is being interrogated in a murder investigation and refuses to speak, only sharing that she "didn't see anything." Yet, with the retrieval and destruction of her diary, the police and her parents can hardly accept that answer. They assume that she must know something and that it was written in her journal, but no one can get it out of her. Through this tangled web we meet Rose's parents, her brother Tabor, and her school friends/acquaintances, Chrissie, Alex, and Anjelica, whose father is also involved in the investigation. As the reader learns more, the case begins to unfold and things become clear, but, we are still left in the dark about the diary entry. Does Rose know something and had she written it down? Who is she protecting? When Rose almost gets run down by a dark truck, her family urges her to give up whomever it is she is protecting. Unfortunately, it might be too late...
I don't typically enjoy thrillers, but I was hoping to read a good one to get into them. Unfortunately, I'm still fishing for the perfect thriller to grab and hold my attention. Fatality is not your typical thriller. It takes place after the crimes have occurred and therefore, is not very suspenseful. The ending is unexpected, yet not climactic enough to be satisfying. I liked that Cooney put in a few different conflicts to spice up the story, but overall, it just didn't do it for me. On a positive note, the plot was intricately woven involving many characters in a few different story lines. Also, it was nice that the plot didn't just involve murders, chases, and escapes like some others in the genre. Ultimately, I liked the book and would recommend it to my students. But if you're expecting a suspenseful and compelling story with many twists and turns, this isn't the book to choose.
Reaction #2:
I feel that this review makes a good point in that this novel is not that suspensful because the murder happened before the novel takes place. However, when I read the novel I was really curious about what was written in the diary... to me this was part of the mystery. Overall, this review is pretty well written and very informative.
Review #1:
Kiddie Horror
by Zoe Page
March 10th, 2003
Growing up sucks. All the books you used to like are now deemed to young for you, you get funny looks in the kids’ section of book shops, and the children’s room at the library suddenly becomes off limits. The solution? Internet bookstores. Order whatever you like and no-one can say a thing. What a wonderful idea. Fatality was ordered from Amazon before Christmas, and has been read 2 or 3 times since then.
The book starts 4 years after the event on which it focuses took place. A murder investigation has been re-opened and Rose is, in the police’s eyes, their most important witness. There’s only one problem: she swears she didn’t see anything. What can I say about Rose? She’s a wholesome, all-American teenager. Smart. Friendly. Straight A student (or 4.0 grade point average as they always like to say). From a nice, middle class family. Likes hanging out with her friends, shopping, grabbing a burger, not a care in the world. But she’s grown up quite a bit in the last 4 years. Grown out of childhood crushes. Grown out of keeping a diary. Oh, the diary. There’s nothing wrong, or strange about writing in one. I’ve done it for years and still continue to do so, as do many people all over the world. Nothing wrong with that at all. But there’s a secret hidden in Rose’s diary. A secret that could destroy her family if anyone ever found out what she knew. The question’s not why she wrote what she wrote, but why she kept it for all these years. When her diary falls into the hands of the police, Rose has to take drastic measures to get it back and destroy the evidence. She succeeds, but also succeeds in drawing even more attention to herself. Obviously she knows something about that weekend, and the police are determined to find out what.
That’s pretty much the first 2 pages for you. Caroline B Cooney certainly likes to pack in the action. It’s a fast paced book that leaves the reader almost breathless at times, eager to know what will happen next. Snippets of information are scattered here and there throughout the book, but it’s only really in the last chapter that you can piece them together and figure out whodunit, literally moments before the police themselves work it out (and don’t you just love being one step ahead of the coppers, even when they’re fictional?). It’s an ending that you wouldn’t have suspected at all from reading the blurb or even the first few chapters.
I’m a little old to be reading it, but I liked this book. It’s a murder mystery but not in the normal sense of the word. Most of the action takes place in a typical American high school in a typical American town, and the story’s not as straight-forward as it first appears, with the initial murder soon spiralling into a number of different mysteries which need to be solved before it can all come together. It’s a bright, cheerful murder in a way, rather than a dark, scary one, and that’s just what I need. I’m the type of person who videos Buffy when it’s on late at night to watch it on a Saturday afternoon when it’s still light outside, and I’m just as bad with books. I dislike those which dictate when I can read them, but even though this included the odd murder here and there, I was happy reading it in bed just before I went to sleep.
I thought it was a very well written book, including just the right amount of humour without it being tasteless – there’s only so many jokes you can include when the main theme is death. The story flows and on a second reading you realize exactly why every one of those sentences is there. There’s not a scrap of useless info presented, but you only figure this out when you start to read between the lines. The characters are lively, the plot well thought out. Amazon put it under “horror” but if I had to I think I’d classify it more as “suspense”. If I had kids aged maybe 11 to 15 years old I’d definitely lend them my copy to read.
To sum up, a roller coaster of a ride, written with flair with an intriguing plot and real characters. Well worth a read.
Reaction #1:
This review says it all. It was well written and discusses a varity of issues related to the novel. I feel this review gives an acurate rating for the novel and also a wonderful summary.
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