Matt and John meet Driana, JoJo and Stef on the beach and they invite the boys to their mansion in the Hamptons for a party. Stef decides it is a perfect night to windsurf. But the other four think the sea is to dangerous and go to rescue Stef. Thus begins a harrowing story that pushes their survival abilities to the limit and tests their humanity.
Griffin isn't afraid to kill off characters, and the reader is told right at the beginning that not everyone comes home. There are gruesome parts and rivalries that threaten to destroy all hope of survival.
Adrift is a fast-paced very quick read. The main problem I had was the simple, choppy sentence structure. It was almost rhythmic. Subject-verb-predicate. Subject-verb-predicate. Most sentences are about 9 - 12 words in length. There are no complex sentence constructions. Maybe that's good if the intended audience are low level readers, but even a sophisticated middle school reader may find this too simple.
Adrift grabs you and doesn't let go. The ending is not all happy and perfect. Things are better, but as the beginning of the book indicates, none of them came back whole.
I would highly recommend Adrift to reluctant readers who like survival stories. The narrator is a boy, but girls will also enjoy it.
Published by Scholastic, July 28. 2015
ARC obtained from Library Media Connection Magazine
228 pages
Rating: 3/5
I usually like survival stories with lots of drama/conflict between the characters. Too bad the writing in this one is so choppy. I think that would drive me crazy!
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