Book Review-The Hit by Melvin Burgess

Title:  The Hit

 Author: Melvin Burgess

Series:  N/A

Published:  4 April 2013

Length: 303 pages

Warnings: rape, drugs, heavy violence

Source:Publisher

Other info: Melvin has written many other things, including Junk.

Summary : Take it. Live it. F*** it.
A new drug is out. Everyone is talking about it. The Hit. Take it, and you have one amazing week to live. It's the ultimate high. At the ultimate price.
Adam is tempted. Life is rubbish, his girlfriend's over him, his brother's gone. So what's he got to lose? Everything, as it turns out. It's up to his girlfriend, Lizzie, to show him...

Review: There’s a new drug going round. Death. Giving you a week to live, and an eternity to not. Adam’s life is going very badly when he is given the chance to take it. Drawn in to a dangerous gang world, protesters, extreme violence and high stakes, Adam will discover what he has to live for.

I was really excited about this one. I’ve not read Junk or anything by Melvin before, but I feel like I should. The premise of The Hit was instantly eyecatching and exciting, and one that I could see going in any number of directions. Melvin took it in a good way.

Adam is a character that you get very close to, probably because of the intimacy and intensity of the things we go through with him, you know, thinking he’ll die being the major one.  He is immature at times, but also real. Lizzie is the saner girl, even though she is forced into the world of danger that Adam gets involved in. Christian is horrible, and scary in the way that real properly evil horrible people are. The mob network and the opposing group, the Zealots, were well fleshed out.

Plotwise, it works. It’s kept moving at a good pace. Things come round in funny ways. The ending-the outline was predictable, the exact workings of it, not so. The writing-really good.

I was surprised that after the emphasis on Death in the press thing and on the internet and thing, it was plot driven by the gang and action like that. It worked as a story, but with the concept, it wasn’t what I was expecting and I think I would have liked to see a  bit more questions being posed as a larger component of the story.

That said, it did  raise  quite a few. Would you take it? How would you spend your last week? Would you think it was worth it?

Overall:  Strength 4 tea to a gritty and real book with a thoughtprovoking look at death and life.

Links: Amazon | Goodreads | Author website |