Book: Conspiracy 365: January

Conspiracy 365: January
Gabrielle Lord, 2010

I wasn't too sure about this series at the beginning of the year. Quite frankly, it looked like a gimmick, a trick set of books. One would be released each month for a year, each book took place over the space of one month, and each book counted down until the end of the year. But I bought the first couple with the intentions of reading them and passing them on to my students.

I never got the chance to read them.

These books were devoured by my students. And the biggest readers weren't the boys who I think they were kind of aimed at. It turned out three girls were the most active readers of the books, even working out a complicated system of working out who got to read them first (often based on birth months). Since I've finally been able to get my hands on them, I thought I'd give them a go.

Callum Ormond is chased down a street by a staggering man telling him to be careful; he has to survive the next 365 days. No sooner than the new year starts, Cal finds himself in ever deeper trouble, from boating accidents to kidnapping to the attempted murder of his uncle and sister.

The book is really broken into short, kind of choppy sections which at first made it a little difficult to read. But it did work in keeping the action moving forward. You've got to read it properly though, so you can keep an eye on the passage of time.

All in all, a pretty exciting opening to the series.

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