The Shards

rivilege teens and a serial killer on the loose….

17-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school. He is part of a privilege and spoiled set of friends who wear the top fashions, are good looking, popular and are free to do as they please. They are all a little messed up, have absentee parents and engage in sex and drugs.

Bret becomes obsessed with Robert Mallory, a new student and instant member of his clique of friends. Bret knows that Robert has a secret. Bret knows about secrets as he has one himself. He spends the book simultaneously exploring his sexuality and hiding it. When not obsessed with Robert, Bret is obsessed with the serial killer known as the “The Trawler”.

Bret wants to be a writer and finds himself hobnobbing with the Hollywood elite. When not obsessing and driving around Los Angeles, Bret has sex with many characters in this book. For me this book read like a love letter to Los Angeles. Having lived in Los Angeles, I was familiar with the neighborhoods, locations, restaurants, streets, highways etc. that are discussed a lot in this book. For me this was an enjoyable part of the book but at the same time, I wondered do we really need to know every route he took to get here and there.

This book was a slow burn and I struggle with them. This is also a BIG book. I feel that there could have been some editing to make this book not feel quite so long. For most of the book, I wondered what the heck is this book about. For me it was about the mood of the time. Bret, the character in the book, discusses how he wants to write a book which is more about the mood, and I believe the author nailed this in this book. He writes about wealthy kids doing whatever they feel like doing without consequences. They seem to have it all, but I felt sad for most of them.

Obsession, drawing conclusions, twisting facts to fit your narrative and teen angst are on display. This character study of a young man was interesting and enjoyable yet didn’t quite wow me as it did other readers.