The Circle - Mats Strandberg & Sara Bergmark - 3*

The Circle

Mats Strandberg & Sara Bergmark Elfgren

***

No Spoilers

The Circle is about a group of teenagers, set in a small Swedish town of Engelsfors. The book starts off well, an intriguing suicide of a young man in the school's bathroom. This sets the book up to either fall fast or intrigue you to keep reading; for me, it intrigued me, until I lost the motivation when the other characters were introduced. Some of them, primarily the popular girl and the nerd and well, to be honest, most of the girls, I did not like. when you take an instant dislike to characters you then find it hard to push on through the pages, but I did to give the book a chance.

Twists happen eventually, strange things start to occur because of the Red Moon, and the group of teenagers that have had nothing to do with each other and their cliques, get thrust together as a 'circle' of special individuals. The twists were okay, nothing special and nothing ground-breaking, they were almost predictable. 

I don't want to hate on this book, I wanted to like it, as I do love foreign translated books. But The Circle seemed hard work for me; at times it drew me in, but then pushed me away. I felt like I was on an ocean's current, being lulled into a false sense of security that it was starting to show promise, and then it crashed me against the rocks with dismay. 

The Circle is a joint novel by both friends Mats and Sara. At times you can really tell that one person wrote a few scenes, whilst the other wrote the rest. Most of the time it flowed well, but you could still tell it was a joint effort -- not that I am saying joint writing is bad, because I'm not. It just take two authors who have a nice flowing relationship between words.

Reading this took quite a bit of effort. For me, it had too many characters to focus on and they all seemed to blend in together, there was no one who stood out for me as a strong character. You had your stereotypical school 'cliques'. The Goths, the Emos, the Popular kids, the Nerds. I don't dislike books set in a school environment, but this one seemed to drag on way too much for my liking. Slow paced and at times boring, but had promise with the rawness of school life, bullying, self-harming, depression and drugs and alcohol, that at some point in our lives. I did feel like I walked through the doors of the school in Engelsfors, but did not want to stay for too long. 

It was left open for a sequel, I'm not sure if this is a trilogy or a series, but I will not be buying the sequel, I did not feel my time was invested, but I gave it a chance.

For the rawness of some scenes, the premise for a really good story and a few good ideas and a great start, I give this book three stars.