The Boy Who Couldn’t Die ISBN: 0 – 8109 – 4824 - 9
By William Sleator Price: $16.59
There is a simple word that’s so powerful that it would change one’s life forever. This word is Death. Close your eyes and clear your mind because you’re about to go through one of William Sleator’s masterpieces that could turn your life upside down; The Boy Who Couldn’t Die. When 16 year old Ken Pritchard discovered that his best friend Roger had just died in a plane crash, Ken locked himself in his bedroom with a mountain full of ads. He soon finds himself holding a mysterious ad that could allow him to be invulnerable. The ad leads him to a middle aged woman named Cheri Beaumont. Promising Ken that she can hide his soul and make him safe from mortality for just $50, she began her work. Of course there is another catch to this, Ken has to die first.
Nothing seems to be different to Ken, but when he crashed into a speeding car, nothing happened to him. Although Ken was positive that he is invulnerable, he still wanted to make sure, so he decided to spent his vacation in St. Calao, a tiny Caribbean island where at least 3 people has been killed by sharks while scuba diving. There, Ken meets a girl named Sabine who quickly discovered that Ken is invulnerable and also finds a deep dark secret that Cheri Beaumont did not mention to Ken; he will be controlled in his sleep. Ken starts to have horrible nightmares soon after, he remembers one when he was lurking in the fog outside of Cheri Beaumont’s apartment and knifed a stranger. The scariest part is that he finds himself in the kitchen with a knife covered in blood while listening to the news about how a man was stabbed.
William Sleator’s writing style is tight and clean so the reader could easily understand. At the same time, each chapter concludes with a suspenseful and grabbing...