Philipp Mattheis

I found after reading this book that I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I feel that male readers would probably have enjoyed it a bit more simply because they could more easily relate to the characters and the things they were experiencing. The book follows four German, male best friends during one summer of their teenage years in which they find a good bit of money and the effect the money has on them, both good and bad. There are also snippets of the story in which the narrator is an adult.
The book was interesting and I liked the author’s style of writing. He had a way of writing that was not too sophisticated to detract from the first person narrative and make me question if a teenager would actually say the things in the novel, which is the often the case with first person narrative YA novels. The book may not have had anything exceptional about it, but it also had nothing that I found horribly wrong with it which is why I gave it 3.5. I would recommend this to male readers who often times have a hard time relating to the characters in novels. They will find that the main characters in this story are similar to them in a plethora of ways and even facing the same challenges that the reader may be facing.… (meer)

The book started out ok kind of reminded me of "Glass" but then it fell apart. Too many ends were left loose. I expected the book to look back and then in the end at least reveal what happened to the rest and how it was tied in. Also I did not understand the short chapter with the dog getting the poison meat. Was it a real dog? Hilda's dog? or a metaphor for the boys who kept returning to the poison money? The book has potential, but in it's current state I was left wanting and wondering what the whole point was.… (meer)