THE ECHO ROOM
by Parker Peevyhouse
Tor Teen
Publication Date: September 11, 2018
From Goodreads:
Rett wakes on the floor of a cold, dark room. He doesn’t know how he got there, only that he’s locked in. He’s not alone—a girl named Bryn is trapped in the room with him. When she finds a mysterious bloodstain and decides she doesn’t trust Rett, he tries to escape on his own—
Rett wakes on the floor of the same cold, dark room. He doesn’t trust Bryn, but he’ll have to work with her if he ever hopes to escape. They try to break out of the room—
Rett and Bryn hide in a cold, dark room. Safe from what’s outside.
But they’re not alone.
I was provided with a copy of The Echo Room by the good people at Tor Teen and Raincoast Books in exchange for a fair and honest review.
The Echo Room had such a great concept. And the first part of the book sucked me right in. Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to keep that pace going.
As you can tell from the synopsis, Rett keeps waking up in a cold dark room. Cool concept, right? Right. But instead of this creating a unique sense of progression, it actually seemed to keep bringing things to a stand still. The pace, which started out like riding a rocket, ground to a crawl.
The twists and turns in this novel were pretty tame. It’s not that they weren’t executed properly, I don’t think. They weren’t really treated like big reveals. It was more like things were hinted at and hinted at and hinted at, and then the story moved on like everyone knew it all along. Strange way to do things.
The way characters would discover things was odd as well. They’d discuss possibilities, A, B, or C. Then they’d agree that B was the most likely and everything would continue on with B as truth, even though there hadn’t been any evidence yet to support that. Again. Strange.
The characters weren’t very likeable in the beginning, but they definitely grew on me. By the end, I was very invested in how things would end up for them. I truly wanted a happy ending for them.
The ending wasn’t quite what I was looking for, though I’m pretty sure I’d still pick up a sequel. I’d like to know what happens next, if only to find out more about what happens to these characters I’ve spent time with.
Fun fact about this post: I like the final cover a lot more than the one on the ARC I received.
