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Thursday 15 November 2012

Review // The Foreshadowing - Marcus Sedgwick

Published - 23rd May 2006
Published By - Wendy Lamb Books
Format - Hardback
Goodreads Synopsis - It is 1915 and the First World War has only just begun. 17 year old Sasha is a well-to-do, sheltered-English girl. Just as her brother Thomas longs to be a doctor, she wants to nurse, yet girls of her class don't do that kind of work. But as the war begins and the hospitals fill with young soldiers, she gets a chance to help. But working in the hospital confirms what Sasha has suspected--she can see when someone is going to die. Her premonitions show her the brutal horrors on the battlefields of the Somme, and the faces of the soldiers who will die. And one of them is her brother Thomas. Pretending to be a real nurse, Sasha goes behind the front lines searching for Thomas, risking her own life as she races to find him, and somehow prevent his death.

A while ago I was getting frustrated with trying to find a quick, short read to fill in the gaps between university reading and so I enlisted the help of my flatmate, who is also a great book lover. She picked out The Foreshadowing, which is one of her books that she enjoyed a long time ago now.

This isn't the type of book that I would usually read so I was excited to jump into it and see what my flatmate enjoyed about it. I was a little disappointed though. 

The Foreshadowing has the potential to be a great enthralling read but it was lacking. The only person I cared about was Jack and he didn't appear in the book until half way through. There was barely any emotion in the book despite several potentially heartbreaking scenes. The main character, Alexandra/Sasha was just...boring. Nothing she did interested me. I loved the idea of the book, and particularly liked that the chapters ran backwards even though it didn't seem to really matter if there were chapters at all. I think the longest chapter consisted of 4 pages.

I just wanted more from it. More information about characters, backstories, relationships and emotions. More of everything really. That being said, it wasn't a terrible book. It was a quick read, simplistic and to the point with a few sparse comments that intrigued me. I'm glad the book was quite short though as I think if it had continued in the same manner, I wouldn't have been able to keep reading.

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