Spoiler Discussion (Apr 2022) Value Read - Saving April, by Sarah A. Denzil

[Pat]

While this was a well-written book with a plot that kept me involved, I can't say I enjoyed reading it. Perhaps the characters didn't appeal to me, with their various life-challenges and difficulties in dealing with them. They weren't people I wanted to know or be involved with, even for the length of a book. I never felt deeply concerned with their lives and read their situations as an outsider, not caring deeply what happened to them. I give this book a 3.

[Bill]

I doubted whether 13-year-old April could have carried off such a complex plot as the murder of her original parents and then compounded her villainy by killing the foster-couple whilst persuading her concerned neighbour that she was a victim of abuse. But however improbable, the story held my attention well. I also have a problem with 1st-person narrators who have to hide critical events of their backstories. How do they remember that they are characters in a novel and mustn't reveal spoilers like Hannah's car smash and April's being adopted till we readers are well into the book?

[Pat]

Bill wrote: "I doubted whether 13-year-old April could have carried off such a complex plot as the murder of her original parents and then compounded her villainy by killing the foster-couple whilst persuading ..."
I agree that many of the plot-necessary points to this story were improbable, Bill. To accept points in fiction, readers must be willing to suspend belief. How well the author can lead you into doing this varies with different people, different authors and different books. When a reader can't go where the author leads, it can put too much distance between the story and the reader's involvement in it to stay under the author's spell or "into" the story world.

One reason we develop favorite authors is because we can always trust them to help us suspect belief in their fictional plots. A point for discussion might be what we couldn't believe about books we read in this group. You started us with good ones about this book. April was possibly younger than 13 when she murdered her birth-parents.

Does anyone recall actual murders by pre-teens in the news? I searched for "child murderers" online and was surprised to find, "nearly 400 children have been convicted of murder in the UK in the last two decades. And the youngest was just 11 years old."
That sounds like most were older than 11.

Which brings to mind another question: Should plot points meet the level of acceptance or knowledge of most people, or is it fair to use facts, information and attitudes that are less generally known as plot points?