Solstice by Lorence Alison

    Some of you might know that I love to read mystery or horror genres so I chose this book called

Solstice by Lorence Alison. The summary at the back talks about the protagonist, Adri (short for

Adrianna) is a standard teen who has a dream of becoming a journalist. Her parents don’t approve of

this choice but instead wants her to become a doctor or a lawyer so they apply her to a law school that

she never approved of. Later that day, Adri gets invited to a concert on this unknown island by her

friend Elena, but she cannot go since her parents proved to control her entire life.  The day the boat

leaves, Adri sneaks out of the house to go to the concert with her friends. As they head to the island

with groups of people who also bought tickets, they see that the island is basically deserted and that all

the music gigs were canceled. Then a dead body is found on the island.

    Now I’m not gonna spoil who killed that person or who the killer is, but the next paragraph is my ideal

thoughts and contains a lot of spoilers about the ending of the book that I did not realize. If you seem

interested in reading Solstice, be my guest, but if you are just here to give a comment then go on

ahead. 

    Now just from the back of the book, I thought this was a book that seemed to be of interest to me since

it has a murder mystery that the protagonist has to solve, but it ended up to be quite confusing. The

way that Alison organized the book felt awkward to read since most of the plot never required Adri to

be there or have a fatal role in this book. You could easily take her out of the plot and have someone

else become the protagonist and it probably would have played out the same. The only effect that I

noticed with Adri is that after she survived the murder island, she took up her interests in writing and

wrote a post on CNN about her experiences at the island. Her parents saw this post and texted her

about how she should follow her dreams in becoming a journalist and that it was okay if she did not

want to go to the law school they applied for. Now even with that ending, I think that the book was

rushed around the end since all it took was one article on CNN and Adri’s parents act like different

people. Like they never even questioned the fact that she snuck out to go on some random island that

was promised a concert and found out that she could have died. But no, instead they are proud of her

for writing a post that summarizes Solstice’s plot and everyone is happy at the end. 

I rate this book 3 out of 5 stars, since there is potential in how the plot could have been organized,

especially the ending. 

-Adrian Tso