I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. It has not affected my opinions.
Genre: Thriller
Age Range: YA
Star Rating: 4 stars
Series: standalone
Blurb:
One has a secret, one of them saw, there’s blood on the papers, who’ll take the fall?
Zaina never meant to get involved. The plan was always to focus on her exams, make her dad proud. But none of this is what she’d planned for. Chanelle never made it to the exam; Nero’s convinced he saw something last night and Ysla can’t stop crying.
As Zaina starts to scratch the surface of secrets which desperately want to stay hidden she begins to wonder how far will they go to keep her from the truth?
Blurb taken from Goodreads. Add to your shelves here.
Review:
YOUR TIME IS UP captures the intense stress of exam season and then asks how it could be worse – add a missing person and some blood.
Exam season is full of pressure on students – from themselves, from family, from society, and from the school. This book explores that through Zaina and her classmates and some of the lengths they go to in order to cope with the pressure, like self-harming.
Her dad has put so much pressure on her, telling her that a failure here will cost her life. Was it potentially well meaning? Yes, but it’s completely the wrong thing to do as it dominates her mental health, sacrificing everything – like friendships and extracurricular – in order to revise. It’s a warning about having a balanced life and not investing everything in one set of exams, while also being a scathing rejoinder to a society and educational system that places too much value in.
The exam hall itself is tense. The book captures the stifling claustrophobia of the setting, the looming paper, the distracting noises of invigilators walking about, pens on paper, coughing, moving in chairs. You can really get trapped in your head in that situation and this book does that, adding a search for a missing student as another distraction.
The book is told in dual timeline between the exam and a party a few days before. I really liked that the party wasn’t the cause of the problem during the exam (which it usually would be.) Instead, this party shows the effect the exam season is having on people, gaining an insight into the mindsets of the characters. It’s a nice piece of misdirection too.
Read my reviews of other books by Sarah Naughton:
Standalones:
Sifa Elizabeth Reads 