Book Review: The Cellar

The Cellar written by Natasha Preston
Release Date: March 1st, 2014
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Form of Novel: Paper back (Barnes & Noble)
Summary: (From GoodReads.com)
      Nothing ever happens in the town of Long Thorpe – that is, until sixteen-year-old Summer Robinson disappears without a trace. No family or police investigation can track her down. Spending months inside the cellar of her kidnapper with several other girls, Summer learns of Colin’s abusive past, and his thoughts of his victims being his family…his perfect, pure flowers. But flowers can’t survive long cut off from the sun, and time is running out…

~This story was originally on WattPad.com and thanks to her loyal readers, Ms. Preston was able to get this novel traditionally published thanks to a fan based project they did over the summer. ~
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I will be honest here, I actually never thought I would enjoy this novel. Most of the reasons was due to having a similar story many of the thriller movies about people being trapped somewhere by a serial killer that usually turns out to be a shitty movie. I also wasn't too excited about the lack of motivation to escape and the climax of the story was too quick to enjoy right at the end of the book. But, I gotta say, this book was different in a weird, but small way. Considering this is Natasha's debut novel, it was a nice surprise to see different point of views switching around with Summer, Clover, and Summer's boyfriend-- Lewis. So it made the story a nice read for stress relief when dealing with things like school work.

While the story is very slow in terms of pace, I enjoyed the characterization between Summer and the other girls, and the opportunity to get to know about Clover's past. Though I do wish I gotten to see some more action or tension between the cast. I honestly wanted this story to have an epic plot twist into it instead of the dryness I found within the text, especially within the dialogue.

Another thing I did enjoy in this story was the switches of the timeline. Some of the chapters did have the present tense, but it was interesting to see the past tense being use so readers could understand the story as a whole and connect with Summer, Clover, and Lewis as I mentioned before.

All in all, This wasn't the best story I personally enjoyed, but it was a decent debut for young adult readers. Natasha Preston knows how to deliver great characters and ideas, but it had the debut sickness where the dialogue was very dry and the plot was bland since it was something I see in many thriller movie before. I do look forward to reading more stuff from Ms. Preston in the future, and maybe a sequel to this novel to see what happens next with Summer and the rest of the Cellar characters.