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Denis Markell

Författare till Click Here to Start (A Novel)

6 verk 337 medlemmar 13 recensioner

Verk av Denis Markell

Click Here to Start (A Novel) (2016) 207 exemplar
The Ghost in Apartment 2R (2019) 36 exemplar
Hush, Little Monster (2012) 35 exemplar
The Great Stroller Adventure (2004) 9 exemplar
The Final Cut (2022) 9 exemplar

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(2.5 / 5)

Twelve-year-old Ted Gerson meets his namesake, his great-uncle Ted, for the first time shortly before the man’s death. At that meeting, his great-uncle asks about his penchant for escape-the-room video games, and then makes him promise to never stop looking for answers. This cryptic message is followed by Ted being given all of the contents of the great-uncle’s apartment after his death. But then Ted discovers that the newest escape-the-room game on his computer is set up just like his great-uncle’s apartment and that the clues in the game are in the apartment in real life!

I really wanted to love this book for more than one reason. First, my daughter is the one who recommended it to me, which is always a special situation. Second, I’m an escape room player (real life games more than computer ones though), worked as a game master and game builder for a while, and still make escape room-type games for my job now. You might say they’re a big part of my life. But it’s probably because of that second reason that this book wasn’t so great for me. The main story about Ted’s great-uncle, whose history Ted got to know through the hunt, was interesting. The sub-plot with the mysterious person who is on Ted’s trail and clearly lying about being a reporter named Clark Kent wasn’t bad, though the reveal and conclusion were underwhelming. The three main characters—Ted, his best friend Caleb, and new girl Isabel—left a bit to be desired, but that didn’t really bother me much.

However, one of my pet peeves involving games that are included in TV shows, movies, or books was a huge part of this book. The way some of the escape room elements were solved just made no sense. There is NO way someone, especially a kid, could have figured out some of these puzzles. Some of them were just huge logic leaps that can absolutely ruin a game for players. Throughout the story, a new online escape room game will present itself to Ted, and it will be exactly what he needs to progress in his mystery. While this is, of course, a stretch, I can accept it as a fantastical element to the story (though, spoiler alert, it is never explained how this happens or who is behind it). However, the first of these games that Ted plays, he plays for 5 hours, then gets stuck, then goes to the apartment and walks through the same steps in a very short amount of time. Yes, he had already done the solving when he’d played the computer game, but 5 hours? To solve what took maybe 10 minutes to get through in real life, and some of that time was spent trying to give the others a chance to feel like they were solving it? I don’t buy it. Then, later in the story, somehow a book that is part of Uncle Ted’s mystery ends up being a clue to the home alarm system of someone completely unrelated (literally and figuratively) to Uncle Ted. How does that make any sense?

It’s certainly difficult to translate something like escape room puzzles to a novel, though several authors have tried. Sometimes it works okay (the Mr. Lemoncello’s Library series is an example of it working okay, though it’s fairly light on the puzzles), but sometimes it doesn’t. In this book, it doesn’t. And unfortunately, for me at least, the rest of the book wasn’t enough to make up for that. For people who aren’t quite as into escape rooms as I am and just like a good puzzle-light mystery in the middle grade category, you just might find this a good read. If you’re a major escape room enthusiast, I don’t recommend it.
… (mer)
 
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Kristi_D | 6 andra recensioner | Sep 22, 2023 |
Note: I received a digital review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.
 
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fernandie | 2 andra recensioner | Sep 15, 2022 |
Decent read -- I liked the strong sense of place (Brooklyn), the diverse characters, and the ghost story. Unfortunately, I didn't really love the main character or his immediate family, so it was hard to stay engaged. Kids might like it better.
 
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jennybeast | 2 andra recensioner | Apr 14, 2022 |

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Statistik

Verk
6
Medlemmar
337
Popularitet
#70,620
Betyg
½ 3.6
Recensioner
13
ISBN
36

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