80 Books No.21: Trapped by Michael Northrop

A novel about high school teenagers trapped in their school as the worst snowstorm for <insert amount of years> batters the East Coast of America. This seemed totally up my street and not a little bit topical given not only Hurricane Sandy in the USA but also the crazy weather conditions in the UK this year. I'll admit I was also slightly swayed by the really cool chapter headings which made it seem like more and more of the pages were being covered in snow as the novel went on; I'm a sucker for gimmicky graphics.

On the topic of graphics, I want to make a point about this front cover, because I'm also quite easily swayed by a catchy cover (yes, yes, I know...). Now, based upon this cover, I assumed something off the chain was going to happen in this book, a preconception aided by the concluding statement of the blurb that 'As the days add up, the snow piles higher, and the empty halls grow colder and darker, the mounting pressure forces a devastating decision. . . .' That word, right there: devastating. I was seeing cannibalism, human sacrifices, something completely Lord of the Flies-esque. Not that I even particularly like Lord of the Flies, but I was hoping this might be an updated version that I could get on board with.

Suffice to say, that I didn't get what I was looking for. The novel started out well, much like Michael Grant's Gone did, with tension and reasonably likeable characters. The narrator was engaging enough and so were his friends, and there was a sense of mounting dread as the snow thickened and they became increasingly cut off from civilisation. I did think the author had thought through the idea of them being snowed in, considering the consequences of power failures, frozen pipes and even the sheer weight of snow upon an old roof, so on those counts he should be congratulated.

Unfortunately, on other counts, he lets the reader down in my view. One character is set up as a ticking timebomb, whilst another is the weirdo on campus who is probably more dangerous than that. There's girls to add temptation into everything, and testosterone running wild. More than enough ingredients to justify the bloodstained front cover and description of 'devastating' in my mind. And then... almost nothing happens. It's like Northrop sets all of this up and then sort of bottles it and to add insult to injury, the story just stops and leaves you with no pay off to all of this. It was another frustrating read, really, which could have been so much better.

I wouldn't discount Northrop in the future, but he'd have to do much better than this.