Saturday, January 21, 2012

REVIEW: Another Kind of Monday by William E. Coles, Jr


Title: Another Kind of Monday
Author: William E. Coles, Jr.
Grade: C+
*I checked this book out from the library

Synopsis from Amazon:
When Mark borrows a copy of Great Expectations from the school library, he finds, concealed between two pages, an envelope containing three crisp one-hundred dollar bills.There is also a note mysterious but intriguing, that invites the finder to embark on a quests. If Mark can puzzle out the meaning of a series of enigmatic verse clues meant to lead him on a treasure hunt around his hometown of Pittsburgh, then, like Charles Dicken's Pip, he is promised a fortune. But he must follow certain rules - like working in absolute secrecy -- or the deal is off. Rewarded by gifts of money, Mark uses the clues to move from one strange Pittsburgh location to the next - an abandoned steel mill, an old astronomical observatory -- when suddenly the rules of the quest change...

Review:
The main reason I got this book was because it is set in Pittsburgh, and I grew up in Pittsburgh. The book talks about specific places, buildings, and streets in the Pittsburgh area and I loved being able to picture in my mind where each event was taking place; from Shady Side, to the Frick Mansion, to the reservoir in Highland Park. Each time Mark solves a part of the puzzle, he is lead to a different part of the city. During his quest, Mark must team up with someone and he picks Zeena, a girl who is the complete opposite of Mark. The building of the relationship between the two really adds an interesting twist to the story. The must learn to work through their differences in order to solve the puzzle. I will tell you that I found the ending to be very anticlimactic and I was not very happy with how it ended. I gave the book a C+ because I did not find the plot very interesting. The main thing that kept me reading was the fact that I could picture in my mind the main parts of Pittsburgh that were mentioned. It is not a book though that I would re-read.

Happy Reading!
Bookaholic

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