Book Review: The Sound by Sarah Alderson.

Product details:
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK.
Paperback, 320 pages.
Release date: August 1st 2013.
Rating: 3½ out of 5.
Ages: 12+
Source: Received from Publisher for review.

When aspiring music journalist Ren Kingston takes a job nannying for a wealthy family on the exclusive island of Nantucket, playground for Boston's elite, she's hoping for a low-key summer reading books and blogging about bands. Boys are firmly off the agenda.

What she doesn't count on is falling in with a bunch of party-loving private school kids who are hiding some dark secrets, falling (possibly) in love with the local bad boy, and falling out with a dangerous serial killer...

Welcome to the island of Nantucket, vacation central for Boston’s glamorous elite, and home, at least for a couple months, to Brit girl Ren Kingston, an aspiring music journalist, who, eager to escape the drama of her disastrous love life back home, has taken a job as a nanny to a wealthy Boston family. Nantucket may be a playground for the beautiful people, but boys are firmly off the agenda for Ren. In her downtime she plans on topping up her tan and blogging about bands.  Nantucket, though, has other things in store for Ren. For one, there’s a killer on the loose – a killer with a penchant for strangling foreign nannies (eek!). And as for boys being off the agenda – there’s not a chance of that happening – not with the kind of guys that Nantucket has on offer.

 Ren soon falls in with a bunch of wealthy kids who like to party hard on Nantucket’s beaches. Amongst them is perfectly preppy Jeremy, who Ren hooks up with in no time at all. So, that thing about guys being off the agenda…? Oh, but there’s another hot guy, Jesse – the local bad boy that everyone loves to hate. By all accounts Ren should stay away from Jesse. He’s already done time and is trouble with a capital T. While Ren, as she likes to remind us, is no Bella Swan, she finds herself drawn to Jesse. Hey, everyone loves a bad boy, right? But bad boys have their secrets, and Jesse has more than most…

A contemporary thriller from Hunting Lila author Sarah Alderson, The Sound had been one of my most anticipated reads of the summer, and while there were parts of this one that I loved, I felt that as a thriller it fell a little short for me. Right from the start we’re told that there’s a nanny killer on the loose in Nantucket, so I presumed this would be a major part of the story. Really, though, it’s not. The mystery of the nanny killer is never really explored in very much detail at all, apart from a couple chapters near the end where it feels a little tacked on. Instead the story mainly focuses on the wealthy kids and the secrets they are hiding, secrets I might add, that might have come straight from the debauched mind of Chuck Bass.  I’d bet on it that Chuck got up to something similar in the Hamptons when he was a teen.

While The Sound falters in its thriller aspect, as a summer contemp, it reads like a dream. There’s a lot to love here including a glorious setting, a relatable MC, lots of fun pop-culture references (although a couple of them seem to have missed the editor’s eye) and as per all of Alderson’s novels, a swoonworthy leading male who will make you go weak at the knees. Admittedly,  Jesse didn’t’ make me drool quite as much as Alex from Hunting Lila, but then, not many book boys make me drool like Alex Wakeman. Oh, that guy. I can’t get enough!

 While The Sound won’t go down as an absolute summer favourite of mine, it is nevertheless another solid read from Sarah Alderson, and is definitely worth adding to your summer reading list. After all, you have GOT to meet Jesse. Le yum!