Rachel Ward (1) (1964–)

I was completely fascinated with Numbers from the beginning. The writing is superb and the characters are magnetic in their realty! There's no sugar coating in this book... Jem is completely and irrefutably PERFECT in her imperfections.

Jem's life sucks. Period. She's an outcast, passed from foster home to foster home throughout her 15 years. Jem tries not to look people in the eye, for if she does- she sees the date of their death.

Creepy right?

This book was over-flowing with irresistible show more characters, each one with a uniqueness all their own. I especially liked Spider's 'Nan', while she didn't play a huge part in the story I felt her presence was huge!

Jem and Spider had the sweetest romance ever... tainted by the little fact that she knew the exact date of his impending doom.

Bummer.

These kids have absolutely nothing to lose- except each other. Heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and action packed are just a few of the things I could say about this book. I laughed, I cried, I pounded my fists in frustration! Ward gets you standing behind Jem and Spider, rooting for them the every step of the way. show less

Jem has an unusual gift: when she looks people in the eye, a set of numbers pops into her head. When she was younger, she thought nothing of this. However, when her mother dies of an overdose, the numbers suddenly make sense to 6 year old Jem: the numbers are the month, day, and year on which the person in question will die.

Now 15 years old, Jem has lived a tough life in inner-city London. Shuffled from foster home to foster home and understandably withdrawn and guarded because of her show more secret, Jem keeps to herself and avoids making contact with anyone else. Kind of tough to make friends when every time you look at them you’re reminded of the date they’re going to kick it, right? All of this changes for Jem when she meets Spider, an energetic boy from the wrong side of the tracks who forces his way into Jem’s life. The problem? Jem knows that Spider will die in two weeks unless she figures out how to manipulate the numbers. Things don’t get any easier for the two when they are spotted fleeing the scene moments before a terrorist attack on the London Eye. Now on the run, time and fate seem to be forcing Jem and Spider into dangerous situations that will surely result in Spider’s rapidly approaching expiration date.

I really enjoyed that Rachel Ward took some risks in this young adult novel. These are not the spoiled, beautiful teenagers that populate so much of this genre today. Life for Jem and Spider is grim and gritty, a lifetime of disappointment and failure all mapped out for them as victims of cyclical poverty and its associated pitfalls. They’ve both been in trouble with the law, and the reader can see how their inherent distrust of a system whose deck seems to be stacked against them leads to one poor decision after another. They’re also both stubbornly obtuse to the fact that they are as much perpetrator as victim in the downward spiral that is their lives.

The one fault that consistently nagged at me was that Jem’s gift is forgotten for entire chapters and seems almost secondary once the characters are on the run. From that point on, it’s a typical chase narrative with Jem and Spider struggling to stay ahead of the mounting manhunt. I was just expecting a little more of the plot to hinge upon Jem’s ability and was disappointed when it didn’t. If I had such a power, I would seriously be messing with some people’s heads. However, because of its strong characterization and one hell of an ending, I enjoyed it enough to give the sequel a shot when it becomes available. show less

Jem Marsh is a 15-year-old London teenager who has the power to see the exact date a person will die when she looks into his or her eyes. Tormented by the anguish in her this causes, she avoids looking directly at others. This gets her stigmatized as a "weirdo," and so she has become one of a group of school outcasts (facilitated – in the cruel way kids can be - by her status as a foster child in a working-class milieu). Narrated in the first person, Jem explains her reaction to seeing how show more long her classmates have to live:

"They say average life expectancy’s going up, don’t they, but I guess that doesn’t apply to kids from the projects of Greater London. Most of them were only going to make their forties or fifties; quite a few were checking out way before that. Casualties of how we all live now, I guess – cars, booze, drugs, despair. I’d rather not have known, but it wasn’t something I could switch on and off.”

Her own life, which she describes as “crap,” slowly improves when she finds herself reluctantly forming a friendship with a tall, gangly, antsy boy in her class named Spider. She resists the relationship because she has seen his numbers, but when the two are witnesses to a terrorist act, she feels she has no choice but to join forces with Spider and open herself up to another human being.

What I liked:

British slang: I love how the language has evolved over there! (But do the British really say flashlight now instead of torch? That would be a shame! Next thing you know they’ll be calling nappies diapers!)

Teenage portrayal: Ward does a great job portraying the angst and the confusion and the anger. Why do I love reading about that? Obviously, because I’m not in the middle of it any more!

Male/Female Interaction: I love that Spider “gets” Jem’s fears and anger, and adapts to them with gentleness and understanding. Jem doesn’t like to be noticed, and she doesn’t like people to say nice things to her. Spider is terrific at making her feel at ease, and I loved how both the problem and resulting dynamic were portrayed.

Theme: This may sound like a paranormal book, but it really is a coming of age story, with just a little bit of a twist to elevate it from the bromidic.

Social Commentary: This is nicely woven into the story without didacticism. For example, when Jem meets the white grandmother who raised Spider, who is black, she observes: "The days of family photographs – Mum, Dad, two kids, all dressed up, all looking the same – did that ever happen? Is there anywhere that still happens? Not here, anyway. Families ‘round here are what they are – just your nan, like Spider, or no one, like me – black, white, brown, yellow, whatever. That’s how it is.”

Ending: Although this is the first book of a trilogy, it actually ends, and in a very clever "Twilight Zone" manner that I never anticipated (although I can visualize the entire set of bloggers who review this writing “oh, I saw that coming a mile away!)

Evaluation: Very compelling story with characters who are appealing. I’ll probably follow up on this one. show less

I got this book as an advanced reading copy (ARC) through the Amazon Vine program. The premise sounded interesting and overall it was an entertaining book if a bit flawed at parts.

Jem is a fifteen year old girl who has a special skill...she can see a person's date of death when she looks them in the eye. She befriends a guy named Spider and through a series of coincidences her and Spider are outside the Eye of London when it explodes. Jem saw that everyone standing in line at the Eye was show more going to die; she panicked and ran off pulling Spider along with her. Now the two of them (both having been in previous trouble with the law) are on the run from the authorities; apparently they were seen fleeing the Eye before it blew up and are now wanted as terrorists.

This book starts out pretty good. Ward brings up a lot of interesting issues about how it would affect your everyday life if you knew when people were going to die. For example, if you knew the person sitting next to you was going to die next week, would you even waste the time getting to know them? Unfortunately the whole premise of Jem seeing numbers never really goes anywhere and is never really used to drive the plot all that much.

Jem and Spider are interesting characters. They are the only characters in the book that are really fleshed-out well. They do a lot of stupid teenage things, but this endures them somewhat to the reader. Jem's hard attitude are snarky manner are well-portrayed, as is Spider's boundless energy.

The best parts of the book are the beginning and the middle when Jem and Spider are on the run. These parts of the book just fly by and make the book very difficult to put down. The action scenes are well done, as are Jem and Spider's struggles to survive in the English wilderness. As the book continues though it doesn't seem to know where it wants to go. Towards the end of Jem and Spider's run, the plot became perfectly predictable and boring. I was disappointed that this whole buildup of Jem seeing numbers didn't really go anywhere much.

There was another huge thing that bothered me that I have seen this in a number of books recently. What is it about female authors not understanding the stages of pregnancy? I mean come on! One female character (I won't say who to prevent spoilers) has sex and then the next day is nauseous because she is pregnant. Is there anyone out there who has morning sickness the second day of their pregnancy? That is just ridiculous. Okay, sorry, I had to vent about that. I have just seen a couple books that are weird about this lately and it is not something that is hard to research and get right.

So overall I liked it okay. It was a quick, adrenaline packed read for the first part of the book. The end of the book was a bit predictable and odd. I liked Ward's characterizations and fast-paced writing style; but the plot left a bit to be desired. I can't really say this book made me really excited to read more books by Ward, but I found it entertaining enough. An additional note on content, there is a ton of swearing, some sex, drugs, and a lot of delinquent behavior in this book; definitely only for older young adult readers or adults. show less