Tim Bowler

What a way to start a book. Hooked right from the beginning, I was.

About 20 minutes before midnight, Dusty’s phone rings. And it’s an unknown boy on the other line, about her age, who is trying to kill himself. All he wants is a friendly voice to listen to while he dies. At first, Dusty is a little frightened, but becomes so much more-so when he says the exact same words that were the last words her brother ever spoke to her. After the boy hangs up the phone on Dusty, she races out show more determined to find him, following his footprints in the snow through the nearby park, only to find the footprints and the boy have completely disappeared.

So starts Dusty’s journey to discover who exactly this boy is, why people are hunting him down (and her due to her association with him), and what exactly happened to her brother when he disappeared a few years ago.

Wow, I don’t do it justice at all.

This is a perfect “curling up in bed with a cup of tea on a January or February night with a book” kind of book. It has to be one of those months in order to get the feeling of the book right – the snow is such a big part of the book that it needs to be reflected in the outside world in order to appreciate it and get into it fully.

There are so many things that I want to say about this book. It started off being deliciously creepy, and ended off being beautifully heartbreaking. It was intense (oh so intense!) and yet didn’t leave me with a book hangover like I would have expected. It left unanswered questions, so I know I’m going to keep thinking about (and possibly coming back to) the book as I wonder what happens after it has ended – what happens to the boy? What happens to Dusty? What was going on with the light, and what about the heat radiating from the paper? So many unanswered questions, and yet the book didn’t feel unfinished. There was a sense of closure, even if there was so much more that I wanted to know.

I can’t help but wonder – are all of Bowler’s books like this? If so, I definitely want to read more of them! But I want to hear from other people about that first. I liked Frozen Fire so much that I’m afraid I might not like any others quite as much as I liked it. show less

Dusty answers the phone when she's home alone one night and suddenly her whole world is turned upside-down by an androgynous person who most people assume is male, and who carries with him stories of rape and disgrace, along with a simple white ocarina. With his arrival, Dusty's town is thrown into an uproar, and a chase on the verge of a witch-hunt begins. All the while Dusty is forever drawn to the boy (as the town calls him) by possible clues as to the whereabouts of her brother and show more childhood best friend, who disappeared years before.
While I was disappointed by an unclear ending, the lack of an explanation was made up for by a clearing up of different facts, one that puts Dusty at least partly at rest and which I won't reveal so as not to spoil the ending for anyone who has yet to read this intriguing novel. show less

Blade is running from his past but he gives few clues throughout the book to what that past entails. Blade lives in an unnamed British city, he is homeless, and he breaks into houses and apartments just to sleep, shower, eat, and read books, which helps to humanize him. The writing style is reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange with short, choppy sentences, an unusual slang, and the first person narration is directed at someone he calls “Big Eyes.” The short sentences contribute to the show more excitement and tension that build throughout the book beginning with when he is seven years old and the “porkers” are questioning him about his role in a traffic incident. Time leaps ahead to when Blade is fourteen and the main action takes place. First he is jumped by a vicious girl gang, and then a Good Samaritan rescues him. But then she is murdered by some thugs who Blade thinks he recognizes from his past, but is she really dead? He realizes he has to leave the city and find a new place to live to escape these people from his past, and winds up allowing a teen mother and her daughter to tag alone. This brutal, violent book is a page turner sure to appeal to reluctant readers, but it leaves more questions than it answers which will hopefully be addressed in the planned six additional sequels. show less

If this book had been longer, I would have DNFed it. And it was going to get two stars until it had an inconclusive and disappointing ending. The first page was intriguing but it went down hill fast. The narrator speaks directly to the reader but makes the reader a character that could potentially interact with the world. I'm all for breaking the fourth wall but not the reality of the book. If I'm the reader, I can't turn on lights. Also, the style was stream-of-consciousness, running show more narrative of every action and thought and was so tedious. There was a ton of weird British street urchin slang but then when calling the police, the narrator dialed 9-1-1 (The UK emergency line is 9-9-9.) The emotional barometer was very off: a big twist was mentioned casually but then obsessed over and then not true. I couldn't figure out what to feel. Overall, confusing and boring. I regret sticking with this book. show less