Shelter Me

Shelter Me
Author: Alex McAulay
Series: ---
Publisher: MTV Books
How Received: publicist

Maggie Leigh just wants to be a normal teenager, but when German bombs tear apart London during World War II, her ultra-religious mother sees the destruction as divine punishment. She sends Maggie to a remote boarding school in coastal Wales, supposedly to keep her safe, but also to keep her in line. The school is creepy, the headmistress is a lunatic, and the students range from spoiled rich girls to speechless trauma victims. But when a tragic accident happens on the beach, Maggie and three friends are forced to flee the school, plunging into the nightmarish world of Europe during wartime. Now every decision Maggie makes is fraught with danger, and living to see another day depends on how quickly she can think and act...and how far she's willing to go.

Sounds good, right?

My tendency to cover-whore and the plot line gave me hope for this book - it sounded really good, and the character, from the description, actually reminded me of Bloody Jack.

Oh, how wrong I was.

If you want to read this book, SPOILER ALERT ahead.

Well, wrong.
The story goes...
- Maggie goes shopping with her aunt.
- Something that wasn't supposed to collapse collapses and crushes her aunt.
- Her aunt goes into a coma.
- Her super religious mom sends her to her uncle.
- No, wait, it's really to a nunnery.
- A crazy nunnery with a lady with burns all over her face.
- A crazy nunnery with a lady with burns all over her face and other crazy nuns.
- Which is five thousand times overcrowded.
- And segregated, rich vs. poor.
- Maggie makes friends with a troublemaker and a dummy.
- She then makes penance with the crazy burned lady.
- She has to go face her fear of the sea to atone for her sin.
- With the dummy.
- When a Nazi shows up.
- With a baby.
- And the dummy kills the Nazi.
- They hide the baby.
- Various other things happen that lead up to Maggie getting locked up.
- She's rescued by a troublemaker.
- They run away with the dummy and the baby.
- A rich girl tags along.
- They jump on a wagon full of corpse-filled coffins.
- They jump on a wagon full of corpse-filled food-filled coffins.
- They jump OFF a wagon full of food filled-coffins.
- They jump onto a train and leave the rich girl and the troublemaker behind.
- They get to their destination.
- It was really a plot to turn Maggie into a prostitute.
- She's tortured to become a prostitute.
- Her aunt, who was in a coma, saves her.

[/SPOILER ALERT]
...
yeah.
He can write.
He just can't PLOT.

Overall Rating: 3/10. He can write, and he can write well. But somebody should outline his books FOR him...


~N