Until the End

Final Friends, Books # 1-3

By Christopher Pike

ISBN# 9781442422520

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Angie

*Beware of possible Spoilers*

Synopsis:

It’s the start of the school year, and the popular girls have decided to throw the best party, one their friends will never forget. But hooking up and hanging out are the farthest things from their minds when the unthinkable happens: Someone doesn’t make it out of the party alive.

The death is declared a suicide, but nothing quite adds up. Convinced there’s a murderer on the loose, no one knows who they can turn to or who they can trust. Nowhere is safe, not the homecoming dance, not even graduation.

The truth will terrify them, but it must be revealed. Their lives depend on it. (Amazon)

Review:

At first glance this 846 page  book was overwhelming. I didn’t realize that it was a trilogy and it took me by surprise. This story opens at the beginning of senior year for a group of 4 friends – Alice and her sister Polly, Jessica and Sara –  that have had to transfer from one school to another one due to low enrollment at both schools. Amidst having to redefine the popularity hierarchy they decide that having a party with the 30 most popular kids from each school is the best way to merge the power structure and redraw the lines, if you will.

In the novel The Party one of the girls is found dead and detectives declare it a suicide. Michael  has a gut feeling that they’re wrong and sets out to find out who killed her. The story continues into the novels The Dance and The Graduation where in addition to Michael trying to find the killer, we find that the homecoming queen is paralyzed in a freak accident, a school icon is destroyed, and the graduation party ends in disaster. There is certainly no shortage of suspense and teenage drama in this series.

Although I found the story intriguing, I had a hard time with the character development. They didn’t feel real to me and I had a very hard time relating to them.  I didn’t feel that the relationships between characters were developed enough either. The stories were written in the 80s which is coincidentally when I attended high school, so I tried to keep in mind that I am not exactly the target age for these books.  But with that in mind, I still would have preferred to see more depth in the people and the plot. I think that this book could easily be condensed into one book of about half the length and still be able to develop the characters and their relationships with each other.

I would have no problem recommending these books to anyone over the age of 16. But due to drug and alcohol use, sexual activity, and abortion references I would be hesitant to allow anyone younger to read them.