Today I am delighted to be taking part in the Dangerous Boys blog tour. I loved the book and the author Abigail Haas's previous novel Dangerous Girls
A big theme in Dangerous Boys is how much
is hidden beneath the surface. With Chloe, Oliver and Ethan, we discover
that not everything is as it seems, and there’s a hidden darkness in
all of us. The question is, what happens when you see just what someone
is capable of — and what about when that person is you?
Book extract
You can never really know someone.
Maybe you think that sounds trite, or perhaps you already learned it a
long time ago. But me, I didn’t really grasp it until now: huddled in
the corner of the ambulance, watching the medics try to shock life back
into a motionless body.
The sirens are blaring, but everything drifts away from me. The noise
and the blood, the hands tugging at my body; the light they shine in my
eyes and the shock of pure oxygen from the mask strapped over my face.
We’re all strangers, in the end.
I remember something, from a book Oliver gave me months ago. It said
that we’re all irrevocably trapped inside our own minds: just as it’s
impossible for anyone to truly know us, we can’t begin to hope to know
anyone else.
I understand it now.
You can be a part of someone’s life for years, your parent or brother
or friend, and then one day they turn around and do something so
unconscionable, a crime so great, that suddenly, they’re a stranger to
you. You think that their goodness is innate, embedded in their DNA, so
you take it for granted, right up until the terrible moment when
everything changes. Only then do you realize, those good deeds were
actions. Actions that can stop, change on a dime at any time.
You don’t know what’s behind that smile. You can’t imagine who someone
will turn out to be. We assume the sun will rise every morning just
because it has done every other day, but what happens when you wake up
to darkness? When you open your eyes and find, today is the one
different day?
I watch them fix the paddles in place on his chest, yell out, and stand
clear. I watch the shock jerk through him, the flatline stretching on
and on and on.
You can never know anyone at all.
Comments