Crap

See this? Don't ever read this. Don't buy it for a young female that you know thinking it'll be something, well, at least exciting and grrll power (the automatic spell check just changed grrll to grill, which is FUNNY). 

One of my daughters borrowed this from the school library to read for some assignment or other which requires them to read an English novel. It was lying around so I read it. The author, Alex McAulay, has one idea. The idea is girls, in tank tops, in a jungle. Based on this he scrapes together a story about young girls sent to wilderness camp when they misbehave, and once there a hike goes wrong and they end up lost and it all goes a bit Deliverance (which frankly has been DONE). Every single idea McAulay has which could have given the story some depth - just some, I'm not asking of r a lot -  he pisses away. It could have been about women's right to their sexuality, religious hypocrisy, society's fixation on women's bodies and how they look, what enduring and committing acts of violence does to your personality, the immorality of keeping children in what is virtually a prison camp - anything. But all leads to something interesting just fizz out. Not one character becomes anything but caricature. And a little over half way through the book he just gives up and just starts to write down what happens next with not even an attempt to tell a story. Like he had a maximum word allowance and was trying to keep inside it. What the hell? I've seldom read worse shite. I'm left with the distinct impression of an unhealthy interest in young girls as sexual objects, especially if they wear tank tops and cargo pants (for some reason one has to say cargo pants and not cargo trousers - why is that? discuss!) and self-publishing. Creepy and stupid.