My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I received an ARC of this book last week. I knew nothing about the story, but the blurb sounded interesting. So I decided to give it a go.
Simon Newman a bit of an adrenaline junkie. He's also chasing a different dream every other year, and doesn't keep in touch with his family. So when he decides to hire a complete stranger to take him to a hidden cave in Wales and the footage from the horrifying incident goes viral, he agrees to chase another incredible feat: Mount Everest.
But someone--or something--might be shadowing him...
Okay. I read this during the weekend, and although I found Part One totally gripping, I didn't enjoy the rest of the book. I just didn't care about Juliet, and I didn't enjoy the rest of Simon's story. I even found myself skimming ahead quite a bit because the Everest storyline just didn't grab me.
But let's go back to Part One because--even though the blurb totally gives this section away--the first 57 pages of this book are awesome! The fact that Simon heads into an underground cave where three kids died decades ago with a stranger he met online is tense enough. That Ed winds up being unhinged, but helps save Simon's life (not a spoiler, like I said, it's in the blurb) and loses his own is astounding. Plus the writing is so good. The claustrophobic surroundings are downright creepy, and atmospheric.
I couldn't put it down. It's just a shame that the rest of the book lost me. I didn't care about anything after that.
So, in The White Road, the author introduces an interesting, adventurous concept and even manages to grip the reader at the beginning. It's creepy, and whether inside an underground cave or above the world on a treacherous mountain, it totally captures the surroundings. I just didn't feel that it delivered as a whole.
For me, the first part was excellent, but IMO it wasn't enough to carry the whole book.
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