Title: Thirteen Days to Midnight
Author: Patrick Carman
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Year: 2010
# Pages: 296
Category: Supernatural choice
Genre: Supernatural
My Summary & Critique:
In the seconds before a car crash that would end his life, Mr. Fielding turns to his foster son, Jacob, and utters three words: “You are indestructible.” Jacob later discovers, quite by accident, that he is, indeed, indestructible and that he can transfer this power to others. He and his best friend, Milo, and beautiful new student, Ophelia or “Oh” become intrigued with this power and decide to test it and use it to help others. What they don’t realize is that it is much more than they can handle. By the end of the story, they come to an understanding of the ultimate power of death.
The novel opens with a scene occurring at the end of the book, involving a death, with internal conflict about whether or not it was “the right thing to do.” (That, my friends, is called a hook.) Then, flashing to the real story, the narrator addresses the reader with a question: If you could have only one superpower, what would it be? (That is called, reeling them in.) From the very beginning of this story, I was hooked and drawn further into this story, packed with action, intrigue, a little supernatural, and a bit of romance. Jacob Fielding is the narrator, telling the story of the conflicts he had with this power of indestructibility and the relationships he has with his best friend and new love interest. It is a story of personal struggle, good vs. evil, life vs. death, choice vs. accountability, man vs. god, love vs. reason—all kinds of good stuff. And it is all crammed into this action packed, fast paced story that literally takes place over a period of about 13 days. I simply could not put it down. It is absolutely the kind of quick read that will appeal to both male and female readers and will certainly inspire discussion of the moral dilemmas faced by the characters. With only a smattering of foul language and no sexual references, this book could be safely recommended to a wide and conservative readership, although there should be fair warning about a lot of death later in the story. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I think young adults will be drawn to this story.
However, I do have a few criticisms that keep me from being entirely satisfied. There were some details that weren’t fully explained in the book—such as how Jacob got to become so close with a foster parent after only 16 months and how he has his foster parent’s last name, and how Mr. Fielding came to take him in the first place since we learn that his life had been pretty humble, solitary, and mysterious before Jacob. Also, I thought that Ophelia (great Shakespeare reference, by the way) was a suspicious character from the start and squeezed into Milo and Jacob’s relationship a little too easily and asserted herself too strongly. Jacob and Oh fell for each other a bit quick (since the book takes place over only 13 days) to be this dramatic life or death love story. I guess the author really might have a thing for Shakespeare because I felt the same way about old Romeo and Juliet, but their story has stood the test of time. And I never really understood the thirteen day countdown (unless it might also be a nod to the bard's Twelfth Night), although it did propel the story forward and help push the reader along in the story to find out what was going to happen next. Overall, these criticisms can be overlooked, because this was a really fun and interesting page-turner of a story and I was thoroughly intrigued as well as entertained. There will surely be a movie. No doubt.
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