Numbers (by Rachel Ward)

I don’t get it. Adventure? Check! Crime they didn’t commit? Check! Runaway misunderstood teens? Check! Underage sex? Check! Excitement…. Zilch! This book is supposed to be an exciting and thrilling ride from beginning to end, but instead… it’s just plain dull.

Jem is a psychic. Well, at least, she ‘sees’ numbers. Experience has taught her the numbers she sees with her mind’s eye (you know, she can only see them when she looks you in the eye) are the dates when people die. Jem knew her mom would die even before she OD’d and left Jem pretty much on her own. Obviously a traumatic experience for any teenager, but for Jem knowing everyone’s death date is a curse she has to deal with on top of the usual social services misery.  Enter Spider, caught up in trouble wherever he goes and of course our protagonist’s love interest. Luckily, Spider also has a dear old Nan who recognizes Jem’s burden. That doesn’t stop the 2 of them to end up in a bundle of trouble and suspected of a terrorist attack on the London Eye, they run away…

Now, when a supposedly adventurous cat-and-mouse game is as boring as watching Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady; when a initial interesting idea (the numbers as a metaphor into everyman’s need to foresee and/or prevent their own death) just never takes off; when all the side characters in the book are flat, completely one-dimensional and unconvincing at best , then you can bet your catnip that this cat will not read Numbers 2.