Review: Crash Into Me by Albert Borris

Crash Into Me
Author: Albert Borris
Release Date: July 7, 2009
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Source: ARCycling
Guest Review by: Samantha

Owen, Frank, Audrey, and Jin-Ae have one thing in common: they all want to die. When they meet online after each attempts suicide and fails, the four teens make a deadly pact: they will escape together on a summer road trip to visit the sites of celebrity suicides...and at their final destination, they will all end their lives. As they drive cross-country, bonding over their dark impulses, sharing their deepest secrets and desires, living it up, hooking up, and becoming true friends, each must decide whether life is worth living--or if there's no turning back. "Crash Into Me puts readers in the driver's seat with four teens teetering on the edge of suicide. But will their cross country odyssey push them all the way over? Only the final page turn will tell, in Albert Borris's finely-crafted tale of friendship forged from a desperate need of connection.

3 stars out of 5 stars

         When I stumbled upon this book and read the synopsis on the back cover for the first time, it gave off this implication of eagerness to become a life changing young adult coming of age novel that would appeal to teenagers all over the world for truly depicting the hardships adolescents face every day, which in all honesty, the novel did not achieve.

I did not find this book relatable or alluring and perhaps it was on the grounds that I do not want to commit suicide, although as an author who writes novels with teenage characters for an audience of young adults, it is his or her job to make sure the reader is completely enthralled inside the world of the narrative story no matter the topic and understands who the characters are, what they are thinking and why they are thinking that.

One aspect I judged refreshing in this storyline was the friendship among Owen, Frank, Audrey, and Jin-Ae, which I notion the characters could have had a little bit more depth in terms of character development. This band of juveniles are all so loosely tied to one another and hail from such distinct backgrounds and personalities, it seems almost impossible that these youngsters would even become acquaintances, except for the fact that they all want to check out of life for good. I thought their companionship was engaging and oddly beautiful in a way. They were all lost within themselves by virtue of their emotional issues that accompany being a teenager, trying to find their sense of purpose similar to every other expected to act like an adult, but treated like a child adolescent and needed each other to help find acceptance for so-called misfits in a world lacking approval.

An element of the novel that is empathetic is how Owen, Frank, Audrey, and Jin- Ae throughout their suicidal odyssey become indecisively hesitant to whether or not they are going to end their lives, something representative of all teenagers and the stress that comes with facing adulthood.

The plot was predictable considering the fact that the whole storyline was basically told on the back of the book jacket. I did not understand the reasoning behind why these teenagers wanted to commit suicide and found myself sighing in exasperation every time the conversation led to what they were going to do at Death Valley, their final destination.

In essence, I anticipated an immense sentimental turning point or a somewhat life- transforming revelation that would leave me breathless and sobbing in my pillow. “Crash into me,” is a mediocre and inherently dissatisfying novel with an easy to foretell plot and disappointing conclusion.  The novel had its “deep” moments, but it should have had more “deep” moments considering the emotional and delicate topic. There was an abundance amount of potential aptitude for this novel to be momentous and memorable that the author did not take advantage of. I was hoping this book was going to be one that would become dear to my heart, but it simply was not.