Book Review: Room Service

Book Review: Room Service
by Maren Stoffels
Pub Date: 29 Jun 2021

read courtesy of http://www.netgalley.com

Room Service is written by Maren Stoffels but translated by Laura Watkinson. I would have liked to have read the original because I somehow feel that the translation caused the sentence structures to be a bit basic; although, I do not think any of the action or suspense suffered as a result of the translation.

If you can get past the fact that this is yet another book where the teens think that they are smarter than the adults, then you'll enjoy this more than I did. The teens are surrounded by adults who are either clueless or kept in the dark by the teens. Both conditions create the need for the suspension of disbelief: the reader has to accept that a dangerous, threatening stalker is not something in which to involve any authority figures.

Beyond that, I did enjoy the suspense and the twist. The author cleverly allowed one character's frequent insistence that he didn't want to be involved in the shenanigans to become a part of the plot. The author also played on the characters' interactions during the story and prior interactions at school to create the necessary relationship tangles that augmented the plot. And I was genuinely, pleasantly surprised by the plot twist.

That the story can only exist because the adults are idiots, however, is the thing keeping me from rating this book higher than ⭐⭐⭐. Some really crafty insights come through the characters during their plight, but the persistence of invisible adults dampened my overall enjoyment.