–review by Kara, teen reviewer
White Space by Ilsa J. Bick
I’d tell you the plot, but I don’t really understand it.
As far as I can tell, this book drew a lot of inspiration from The Matrix and Inception (or at least that’s what the back of the book said). It’s similar to Inception in terms of confusion (I feel like if I read it again, things would make more sense, but it’s 560 pages so I’m not particularly motivated to). It’s meant to be a horror novel, and at points I did get scared, but most of the time I was too preoccupied trying to understand the book to be that scared.
The author kind of just drops you in a puddle of confusion, and generally, if books start out like this, things start to make sense soon after (or at least get more orderly). Nope. It took 350 pages for me to start to understand what might be going on with this one. It’s frustrating when you expect a good scary story and all you can do is think about physics and try to make all these connections that get all tangled up.
It’s redeeming quality is its creepiness. If it’s not horrific, it’s at least chilling. It has all sorts of different scary stuff for different people, so if you’re not afraid of corporeal things, there’s probably some incorporeal fear that is similar to your own. If nothing else, it’ll at least make you pause before looking at your reflection in a mirror. But, like I said, the task of trying to figure out what was going on eclipsed the horror.
Overall, I don’t really recommend it unless you’re looking for a horror novel that’s scary but is incredibly confusing. 5 stars. –Kara, teen reviewer
Find the book in our library: White Space