Panic by Lauren Oliver

This is the first book I’ve read by Lauren Oliver. When I’ve read the title, Panic, the first thought that came to my mind was that it’ll be about a character’s mental state, you know the things that you can associate with paranoia, trauma and fear but of course that wasn’t the case.

Panic is a dangerous life-risking game which played by graduating seniors every summer in the small town of Carp with a prize money of over $50,000. Heather never would’ve thought that she would participate in the game but she impulsively did so, at first when her broken heart have seemed like overtaken her sanity then later on was driven and motivated for the money for her sister in order to start a new life. While Dodge joined the game driven by anger and used the game in order to take revenge for what happened to his sister.

For me, this is a “so-so” novel. If you are after a light and easy read and probably will read just to kill time or for entertainment, you know when you just want to have to do something then this is an okay novel to read through. This is in a third-person point of view, my first in a long while for I have been reading a lot in a first-person point of view. The story changes between Heather and Dodge.

The characterization and the story itself is just okay for me I must say because it is just the usual and ordinary novel. There aren’t a lot of twists, not really shocking and is kind of predictable. Good thing that I didn’t read the back-cover teaser of this before I read it because if I did, I would’ve been a lot more disappointed with this. The teaser will make you expect a lot setting the bar high, it’s kind of misleading.

I think Panic wasn’t explored that much, I mean there was no history about it. It left me with unanswered questions as to why the police didn’t really try hard to step in to stop or at least do something about Panic, being it a “legendary game” in which there were death and injuries occurred. I also wanted to know as to how the judges were picked and how did they organize and manage the game and how did they come up with all of those challenges. And I just don’t get it as to why the kids of Carp chooses to play in a dangerous game that will likely cost their lives just because they don’t have anything to do during the summer. It infuriates me to think that they will risk their lives just because of boredom. I don’t know, in my mind it just doesn’t makes sense. I also think that the climax wasn’t there. I was waiting for it towards the end; I was waiting for something big, for something shocking to happen until it literally ended. I was confused. It seemed so easy.