The Reunion : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A touch of evil.
Review: "The Reunion," a thriller by Sue Walker, focuses on a group of adolescents who are sent to "The Unit," a progressive psychiatric hospital outside of Edinburgh. The inmates are given a great deal of freedom, considering that their mental problems are quite severe. The goal of this facility is to reach these troubled teens and send them out into the world as potentially productive individuals. Twenty-six years pass, and one by one, members of the Unit are dying, apparently by suicide, accident, or murder. What is the connection between these seemingly unrelated deaths?

Sue Walker has written an impressive debut novel that is an exciting and engrossing page-turner. The author vividly portrays the troubled teens on the Unit, including Danny, a rapist at fourteen, Carrie, a drug-addict who was abused at home, Innes, a shoplifting truant who acts out to punish her overbearing mother, and Alex, a foul-mouthed and aggressive bully. The scenes in the mental hospital are stark and brutal. Walker captures the despair and anger that cause these young people to act destructively.

These flashback scenes are much more effective than the scenes that take place in the present. Walker dizzyingly moves from one character to another, showing us what has happened to them in the last two and a half decades. In some cases, the disturbed teens grow up to become well-paid professionals, but, even as adults, they still have nightmares that never die.

The weakest part of the book is the over-the-top ending, in which Walker crams too many melodramatic, unbelievable and violent events into a few pages. The author reveals a "secret" that most attentive readers will have figured out for themselves long before. Still, Walker gets high marks for her powerful and disturbing scenes in the Unit, and I look forward to more work from this talented writer.

Rating:
Summary: A page turner
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel, it was a real page turner (had a few unintentionally long lunches at work as I was too engrossed to stop reading).It is a dark tale v. well told. I think this is a great debut novel and look forward to the next.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Fast-Paced Mystery/Thriller
Review: Innes Haldane was a mere fifteen-years-old when she was admitted to The Unit, a home for teens coping with dysfunctional behavior problems, while highly intelligent at the same time. The Unit, was an experimental home located in the outskirts of Edinburgh, and it was home for exactly one year for Innes, for she met four other teenagers who changed her life during her stay there, as well. Alex Baxendale, an aggressive teen; Isabella Velasco, a beautiful teen; Danny Rintoul, a child rapist; and Simon Calder, who was as studious as he was shy. Sure, they all went their own ways after a year, but that year has created some serious problems for the five of them. For now, more than twenty-years later, a killer is after the five of them, stalking and striking them one at a time. Now, the remaining survivors are forced to come together to confront the terrible secret that has been kept between them for these twenty some-odd years, in the hopes that it will save them, as opposed to destroy them.

Sue Walker has done an amazing job with THE REUNION. The dialogue is fast-paced, and extremely quick-moving, while at the same time easy to understand and follow. The characters are intelligent, and thought-provoking, as is their witty commentary. Fans of psychological thrillers will be taken on an exciting thrill-ride that will have them gripping the edge of their seat, while fiercely turning the pages to find out what could possibly happen next. With riveting twists and turns on every page, this is an absolute must-have.

Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper

Rating:
Summary: deep psychological suspense
Review: The Adolescent Psychiatric Unit in Edinburgh, known just as the Unit, was a place where the most troubled teens would receive the mot innovative treatment for mental disorders. The class of 1977 contained youths with a wide variety of problems such as sexual deviancy, violent tendencies, and worse. When they were released, society hoped they would lead normal productive lives. As a whole the group did not stay in touch with one another, but a few formed a cell that gets in touch with each other every November 8th.

Innes Haldane was a Unit patient, but never heard from her peers until out of nowhere Isabella Velasco called her; Innes never returned the call. A few weeks alter, Isabella was dead, ruled a suicide. Innes learns that another graduate Danny also apparently killed himself just before Isabella did. A hird Unit member almost died in the inferno that left her spouse and children dead; she might as well have been dead because her mind broke in the fire. Innes thinks this is too much coincidence as all these deaths are related, but how? Unbeknownst to Innes is that a heinous act during a camping trip as Unit members led to the present spate of killings and injuries.

Sue Walker is a marvelous storyteller who masterly uses flashbacks as a key plot device that ironically enables the reader to know what Innes does not comprehend. THE REUNION is very atmospheric, dark and foreboding in a gothic Jane Eyre like way, but is clearly a psychological suspense that tantalizes the audience with what is really happening inside the minds of the key characters. Ms. Walker should receive Edgar consideration for this highly recommended book.

Harriet Klausner


Rating:
Summary: Enrossing, but ultimately unsatisfying
Review: This book definitely kept my attention until the very end, but when it was over I was left with many unanswered questions. The author does not spend any time at all delving into the problems that got the teens into the Unit in the first place. I kept waiting for her to get more in depth with the characters, but it never happened. Having said that, the plot was very interesting and I couldn't put the book down.

Rating:
Summary: What happens here doesn't stay here
Review: What could be more dangerous than keeping seven troubled teens cooped up at a psychiatric unit? Taking those same teens on a camping trip with minmal supervision. That outing haunts their lives forever.

This book opens in the present time, many years after that outing in 1977. And the personal scars of that event are explored through the now-adult lives of those teens.

Author Sue Walker spins her tale slowly. She tells her story through the eyes of several of the teen-cum-adults. She does a masterful job of capturing their despair, anxiety and fears concerning their troubled pasts. But often her transtion from the thoughts and dialogues of one character to another are not delineated clearly enough ; and the characters' voices are not distinct enough for the reader to know exactly which character is the focal point at all times.

That said, Walker does an excellent job of keeping vital pieces of the story hidden until the end. There is a strong sense that the stories of the characters will progress to a denouement and there is none of the formulaic gradual exposure of clues to the the crime that is becoming trite in modern novels. This is a big plus. But when one character, by rambling dialogue, lays out the answers to all of the reader's questions, it is a big negative.

This is not a bad book. It is well-written and does carry its plot nicely. But it is also not a great book. The suspenseful promise presented by at the beginning my this review is muffled by slow pacing is slow and vagueness that hampers impact. This is what "mediocre" reads like.