Firstly I would like to thank Orion Publshing for sending me this ARC which was a total surprise as I honestly was not expecting it so thankyou so very much!!! I feel so lucky I got to read this book as an ARC because honestly it was so much more incredible than I first expected. Like seriously, WOW. 13 Minutes is available to buy from any book store from the 18th of Feburuary 2016. It is also available for pre-order from Amazon or any online book store. For those conserned this review will be SPOILER FREE so read ahead 😉

 About The Author

Sarah Pinborough was born in 1972 in Buckinghamshire, and now lives in London where she works as a  full time, award-winning, writer and script-writer. Her published work, almost all of which is optioned for TV or film adaptation, includes the stunning novella The Language of Dying , THE DOG FACED GODS series, THE HIDDEN KINGDOM series, THE NOWHERE CHRONICLES (as Sarah Silverwood) and two standalone novels: The Death House and 13 Minutes.

You can follow her on Twitter @sarahpinborough

 

 The Blurb

She really doesn’t remember

U think she will? I’m scared

Me 2. I’ll call you l8r

I wish she’d died.

DELETE! We’ll be ok.

---

I was dead for 13 minutes.

I don’t remember how I ended up in the icy water but I do know this – It wasn’t an accident and I wasn’t suicidal.

They say you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but when you are a teenage girl, it’s hard to tell them apart. My friends love me, I’m sure of it. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t kill me. Does it?

 

My Review

This book has seriously got to be one of the most riveting books I’ve read in quite a while now. I honestly could not put this book down. At all. I’ve had such a busy week this week but I still managed to finish this book in 2/3 sittings  as I literally didn’t want to stop. This book is truly captivating and honestly gave me PBD (post book depression) as once I’d finished it it took me a full day to decide what to read next as I genuinely thought “what could even come close to that?” My best way to describe this book without giving too much away is that it is very similar to We Were Liars by E. Lockhart – IF YOU HAVENT READ IT DO READ IT NOW!! – but I actually honestly thought this books was so much better. I mean don’t get me wrong I absolutely LOVED We Were Liars so much but this book is just WOW.

The book is a gripping psychological YA thriller about our most important relationships and what we really know about the people closest to us. It also looks at  manipulation and the power of the truth in the age of the smartphone and social media. It is set in a modern age where materialistic objects prove your popularity and focuses on how popularity can change someone. It is an absolute MUST-READ for teenagers and fans of enthralling domestic noir.

The book like many I have read uses dual narration but unlike some I have read this is the clearest dual narration I have ever encountered in the sense you can tell exactly who’s talking at every point. The main narration comes from the central character Natasha ‘Tasha’. I liked Natasha’s view as it gave an interesting insight to how people feel about being ‘popular’ and how it affects them as a person. The other main narrator was Rebecca ‘Becca’. I absolutely loved Rebecca’s character not just because we shared a name but because of how honest she was about things even though at times she didn’t want to admit things she did in the end. I think the contrast between these two characters also helped in making it very clear who was speaking at what point and that helped greatly.

This book I found was set out in a slightly unusual but interesting way. There were chapters from Natasha’s view and chapters from Rebecca’s view but then there were every so often chapters that were set out to look like text messages between two characters which gave little clues as to what happened in the story. I’ve never come across a book set out like this before and I really do feel it helped to keep up the Mystery aspect of this book. At first I thought it wa making it slightly predictable but after the HUGE plot twist I realised it was for a reason.

Natasha and her two bestfriends Jenny and Hayley are ‘the Barbies’ and this seriously reminded me of Regina, Gretchin and Karen from Mean Girls. Which is another element I really loved about this book because their relationship clearly only works because they all want to be popular and by being friends with Natasha they get that. This is very similar to the relationship of the plastics in Mean Girls and seriously I LOVE the Mean Girls movie so fetch. I also got a bit of a Pretty Little Liars vibe from this book as it revolves around girls relationships with one another and so many secrets. I personally haven’t read the PLL books myself as I watch the TV show and I’ve been told the books are very different form the show so I don’t think I will ever read them. However from my knowledge of the show, I do think that this books has similar elements to it.

Secrets Secrets Secrets. A huge portion of this book revolves around secrets and uncovering them and revealing lies. This I think is the main reason I loved this book so very much as it just made me more and more intrigued to find out the truth. This is the first time I’ve read a mystery book like this and I seriously cannot express enough how much I enjoyed it.

I honestly don’t think I can say a bad word about this book it was absolutely spectacular. The one thing I did notice was there were a few typos but that was purely because it was an ARC Uncorrected manuscript copy so that’s not even a bad thing.

My Rating

For a truly captivating novel I did not want to put down I give this book 5/5 stars