Review: The Turtle Boy

The Turtle Boy by Kealan Patrick Burke

Ok, so I've had a productive reading day so far - finished a Dickens novel it's taken me the best part of a month to get through and then powered through a novella by the name of The Turtle Boy. If I remember correctly, this was a freebie on Amazon, so I don't feel as though I've wasted my money.

I'm not entirely sure how to describe this book, I didn't know what to expect when I picked it up and I'm at a bit of a loss about how to write about it now.

It starts with two boys at the start of their summer holidays, who encounter a strange and deformed kid near a local pond. Another local girl later reveals she's also seen the weird boy and he gets the name the Turtle Boy - because the pond is apparently home to a load of turtles (there's a bit more to it than that, but basically that's where it comes from).

The whole book is told from the point of view of 11 year old Timmy and, as an adult, you quickly realise his best friend Pete is being physically abused by his father. The first half is relatively straightforward and then it goes, well, just a bit surreal.

There's a big storm, Timmy's dad goes out to have a talk with Pete's dad after he's rude to Timmy and his mum, tension builds, the power gets cut, he's been gone ages - you get the idea. So, Timmy, his mum and his friend Kimmie go to look for his dad, only he's not at the house. Then (obviously) Timmy realises they've gone to the pond. This is where I started to find this story totally bizarre.

Timmy runs off to 'save' his dad, only to stumble out of the storm into a bright summer's day and witness the murder of the kid they dubbed the Turtle Boy around a decade earlier by the pond. The assailant doesn't have a face, which made me initially think Timmy had just fallen asleep and was having some weird dream - or maybe had succumbed to hypothermia or something and drifted into a coma. But no, apparently he's just found the ability to see the dead (and their memories? I wasn't quite sure on that point).

Fast forward back to the future, the storm and the pond. Timmy's dad is fighting with Pete's father, who pulls a gun, at this point, the ghost of the dead kid appears, summons an army of turtles and sends them off to apparently attack Timmy's dad (I think the implication is that he may have been the man who murdered the Turtle Boy, but it's hard to say),Timmy intervenes and instead this hoard of marauding reptiles turn on Pete's dad, who, incidentally, has just killed his son.

The ending seemed incredibly rushed, as if the author had got a bit bored of the story and decided to just stop (although he has published other books about Timmy, so maybe I just need to read some of those to find out more). There were questions left hanging that, I imagine, are meant to make you pick up the next book in the series straight away - but I just don't want to. I don't really care that Timmy can now see the dead, or that his dad might be a murderer. I'm also slightly confused as to how he suddenly has the ability to see ghosts, while Kimmie, who also saw the Turtle Boy, apparently doesn't (again, maybe all is revealed in the next book?).

In all honesty, I don't think I'll find that out. I'm just going to chalk this one up to an experience and move on, thankful that I only spent a couple of hours reading it rather than a couple of weeks! On the plus side, while the story was strange at best and a little hurried, at least the author's writing style didn't irritate me, I'll say that for him. Sadly, his characters just didn't grab me and I didn't feel I had enough time to get to know any of them enough to actually care what happened in the end.

Would I recommend this book? Probably not, unless you particularly want to read about a hoard of vicious turtles - I've always found turtles to be quite friendly personally, but maybe that's the difference between marine and freshwater species, who knows? It's a very quick read, and it's free and those are its two best selling points for me!