The Party by Robyn Harding

The Party was one of those books that I wanted to read for ages, but have pretty much forgotten about it over and over again. I’d see it in the store, or online as a recommended book, but I never picked it up. So when I was out shopping for groceries with my mom the one day and I saw it there, I figured why not? So I picked it up and decided that I was going to give it a read.

Once I finished the library book I was reading, I started in on this one. Once I started reading this, I could not put it down. It was amazing. It wasn’t exactly as edge-of-your-seat as I had hoped it would be, but still, it was really a gripping read that I absolutely loved reading.

First off, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting – I guess I was expecting a little more of an earth-shattering secret to come to light than what did – but it didn’t make me dislike the book or anything. It was just…I’m not sure. Not what I expected. But like I said earlier, I loved reading this book and I kind of tore through it, so it didn’t really make me not want to read it.

The Party starts off with an interesting chapter about something that happened the night of Hannah’s sixteenth birthday party, where she has a sleepover with a few of her friends. Since they are teenage girls, they want to do more than just watch scary movies and play Truth or Dare – but Hannah’s mother, Kim, is incredibly strict and refuses to let them do anything more than that – so they, of course, decide to sneak it.

What happens over the course of that night and in the days following it is a horrifying account of mistakes the girls made leading up to a frightening moment where one of them is incredibly hurt, and why. Friends are divided, families are torn apart, and the light is shed on the events that really occurred that night.

It’s so hard to write a good synopsis for this book without spoiling it. While I’m surprised it wasn’t more…surprising? than it was, it was still a good read. I wouldn’t call it a thriller, either, which is what it has been dubbed as. Maybe suspense, but it definitely wasn’t thrilling. It wasn’t like an edge-of-your-seat type thing or anything.

I think my favorite character in this book was Hannah. I really didn’t like Kim’s character in the slightest. If anything, I found her to be quite annoying and I honestly hated the chapters that were narrated by her, because her whole personality was just…stuck-up and self-centered.

The other characters…Hannah, Jeff, and Lisa, for instance, didn’t feel so forced. I really liked Jeff – he tried to be a cool dad, and when it all fell apart, he was stuck trying to hide evidence that he did anything wrong. It felt real. Kim, on the other hand, just felt forced.

I think this is a great book for those who are interested in reading something suspenseful. Thrilling? Not really, no. But the writing style is absolutely brilliant, and I fell in love with this book. I wish I had picked it up sooner!