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Book review

Title: Truth or Dare
Author: Celia Rees

Josh and his mother go to spend the summer with his dying grandmother. Josh stays in his mysterious Uncle Patrick’s room and starts to discover the dark secrets that his family has hidden all these years. The author wrote the story in details. She described everything so clearly that I could easily picture the scenes in my mind after reading. When he was in his grandmother’s room, the author wrote, “The drawer smelt of leather and tobacco, of the old man himself. The boxes of monogrammed handkerchiefs on top looked suspiciously like the ones Josh and Maggie used to give him for Christmas. Underneath them was….” As Josh was discovering things in the house, it kept me wondering if he was about to find the hidden secret of Uncle Patrick. I was anticipating that Josh would uncover some secrets or clues about Uncle Patrick. However, he continued looking and wondering at things in the room until he saw Katherine.
From chapter twelve onwards, the story starts to get more interesting. Josh turned on the computer and opened the file called ‘SUMMER DOC.’ out of curiosity. The files were actually his mother’s autobiography. Later, Josh and Katherine discovered that the mysterious pattern they saw on the computer was exactly the same as the floor tiles underneath the carpet in the hall. After some time, more things were discovered. Josh and Katherine managed to uncover the secret.
In the 1950s, not much was known about autistic spectrum disorders. Uncle Patrick was a autistic spectrum disorder patient. The treatment was uncertain. In this fiction book, Josh’s grandfather put Uncle Patrick away in a mental hospital. I think that this might be the only solution which benefits both the patient and his family at that time. Fortunately, people know more about autistic spectrum disorders and its treatment now.

Qihui