Review: Frost

Review: Frost

Book Rating: 3 Stars
Cover Rating: 4 Stars
 
Reading level: Young Adult  
Hardcover: 400 pages                          
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (September 13, 2011) 

  Leena Thomas’s senior year at boarding school begins with a shock: Frost House, her cozy dorm of close friends, has been assigned an unexpected roommate: confrontational, eccentric Celeste Lazar. But while Leena’s anxiety about a threat to her sanctuary proves valid, it becomes less and less clear whether the threat lies with her new roommate, within Leena’s own mind, or within the very nature of Frost House itself. Mysterious happenings in the dorm, an intense triangle between Leena, Celeste, and Celeste’s brother, and the reawakening of childhood fears, all push Leena to take increasingly desperate measures to feel safe. Frost is the story of a haunting. As to whether the demons are supernatural or psychological . . . well, which answer would let you sleep at night?

THOUGHTS: I had really, really been looking forward to this book, and I have to say, it did not impress me. I love creepy books, ones that keep you thinking and plotting, and that is what I expected this one to be like. Well, it was set up to be that way, but I had the book figured out the moment Leena describes the weird, alluring feeling she had towards the house. It was really predictable. I also got to places where it was completely and totally boring- absolutely nothing of interest was going on. The parts where you would want something to jump out and scream "BOO!" were left bare, and the places where that did happen were few and far between.
 
 SETTING: The setting, of course, is Frost House, a dorm that is said to be haunted. Leena feels an immediate attraction to the place, and pulls some string with connections so that she can live there. But while the book attempts to play the house up to be this spooky, sinister place, I never really got that from it. I would have liked to see more nightmares, doors slamming, messages on walls, ect. You know, the kind of stuff that makes you look around your room and turn on every light possible. This book just didn't pull it off.

 CHARACTERS: The characters in this book did seem real, even though I did find myself annoyed with Leena. She thinks everything she does is best, even though a lot of the time it's hurting other people. But, the way I see it, we shouldn't judge a book on how we liked the character, but rather how the character fit the story she or he was placed in and how real that character seems. And the writer definitely has done an excellent job of making her characters seem real.
  
PLOT: Here is my biggest problem. You get all this buildup for a heartbreaking, sucker punch to the gut, knock-down, drag-out climax. The whole book is setting you up for this one moment and.............. BOOM! NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENS. This is one of my pet peeves in books- anti-climatic endings. I want drama, despair, action.... anything. This book consists of sitting in a closet. You can't even really tell when the climax occurs. It left me beating my head against the wall. It also had one of those unresolved endings, which irks me to no end. On a good book, I find them intriguing. In this one... not so much. It never even really discusses the ghost haunting frost house. All you get is that it was a girl who lost her baby and likes Leena but not Celeste. Whoooo. Scary. Overall, not a book I would recommend.