Verango 1

Axcel Verango

Mr Frieden

English II Honors

18 February 2020

Outside Reading #3

1) One connection I can make to something else I’ve read is the similar goal of wanting to

escape the cruel world that the main protagonist lives in. Some of which are pretty well

known such as the Maze Runner series, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and so on.

2) Two REAL-WORLD connections that I was able to make to this book while reading it

was when they brought up historic events throughout the book. All of the events that each

character’s story takes place is during the times of some of the most famous yet gruesome

times in history. Those include the events of The Holocaust, the riots of cuba during the

90’s, and the attacks taken place in syria in 2015.

3) I feel like the author mainly wrote this story for those who like the stories that have a sort

of slow, yet hopeful climactic buildup of a plot. It’s one of those types of stories where

there’s very little hope for the main character at the beginning, but as the story

progresses, that sliver of hope starts to expand more and more.

4) Just like I said before, I feel like the author's purpose of this book is to sort of appeal

towards audiences that like the stories about near-hopeless goals coming true as the story

progresses and builds tensions.

5) To start it all off, if I were a book critic and was given this book to critique, I’d give this

book a solid 4.5/5 stars. I really like the way the book branches off into three separate

perspectives, yet they all still tie together and have similar struggles in one way or
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another. I genuinely actually like this book, main reason being since it’s one of the only

books that I was able to understand in a while ever since we started reading more

complex novels. The novels we’ve read recently had a ton of different meanings and

grammatical techniques that my little brain still hasn’t processed till this day. Although I

do enjoy being able to follow along with a storyline and fully understanding the message

it’s trying to get at, there is one thing that I do find out of place/random. It has to do with

the specific 3 events that the author chose to use in the book. It’s not that I don’t like

these events being mentioned in the book, it's just that I find it odd on why he chose those

3 events when he could’ve gone with some that happened around the same time.