Spray by Harry Edge

Summary/Cover Image from Publisher's Website:

A group of teens sign up for an assassination game on the streets of a big city. Their weapons: pressurized water guns. It’s meant to be a game, a sport. But for some, it’s more than harmless fun. To win, they’ll use any means necessary.

Two hundred players. Three weeks of tense cat-and-mouse action. Every stalker is being stalked and only one player will be left standing. No one will be the same.

Through multiple points of view, Harry Edge puts readers right in the middle of the action—watch your back!

Review:

Even though Harry Edge's Spray isn't my usual type of book, I have to admit that after reading the summary and an excerpt from the book I was quite intrigued. I loved the idea of assassination water gun game and how the story of it would be told in the eyes of several different participants in it. Sadly enough, Spray wasn't nearly as spectacular nor ground-breaking as I thought it would be.

One of the major aspects that just didn't do it for me was the characters. With books containing alternating perspectives, I always know the characterization probably won't be so great, but what I got was even worse than I expected. For one, the many characters and perspectives (there were about nine in all) forever left me confused about who each person was and made me wonder what exactly some of their parts were in the story. I think this story would have been much better if Mr. Edge picked a handful of perspectives to tell the story from because not only would it have been less choppy but I possibly could have been able to know enough about a character to relate to him or her; something I just wasn't able to do in this.

Though, I will admit the premise of this was pretty great and execution of it did a pretty great job of keeping me interested in the plot lines at hand. I thought the idea of the water game was always intriguing and something that would be cool to participate in.

In all, if you like plot driven books more than ones with lots of character development, Spray is the book for you, because this book wasn't ever lacking in new twists and turns. So, therefor, I think this book would be perfect for teen boys who are reluctant readers rather than teen girls like myself.

Grade: C-

Spray is now out! You can read the first few pages here.

Source: Ksenia at Macmillian.