True Love, The Sphinx, and Other Unsolvable Riddles

TRUE LOVE, THE SPHINX,

AND OTHER UNSOLVABLE RIDDLES

A Comedy in Four Voices

By: Tyne O’Connell

  FIRST SENTENCE

“Most of the guys in geography class that afternoon were e-mailing, texting, or fooling around on their BlackBerrys and iPods.”

SUMMARY

from goodreads

American teenagers Sam and Salah lead fairly uncomplicated lives.  They breeze through classes at their prestigious Manhattan high school, their friends and classmates all look up to them, and they’ve never had to put much effort into attracting girls.  But when their class embarks on a field trip to Egypt, complications arise in the forms of Rosie and Octavia, two British beauties who won’t be easily charmed.  Amid luscious scenes of Egyptian culture and history, these four star-crossed lovers will have to endure mistakes, missteps, and plenty of misunderstandings before they can achieve their hearts’ desires.

REVIEW

Talk about one very complicated love square! “Sam likes Octavia, Octavia likes Salah, Salah likes Rosie, and Rosie is pretending to like Sam.”  These four teens come together on a school field trip to Egypt.  Luckily, the story is told from four different points of view, so the reader is able to keep track of the teen relationship drama. 

Octavia and Rosie go to a private British school.  Rosie comes from a rich family and she is very shy.  Octavia is shallow and loves to be in the spotlight.  Although everyone thinks her family is well-off, they really are quite poor.  I found Octavia to be extremely annoying and overly dramatic.  I guess that’s how I was supposed to feel about her though.

Sam and Salah go to a public high school in Manhattan.  Sam acts like he is totally into girls, but his true love is photography.  He goes way overboard trying to gain Octavia’s attention.  Salah was born in Egypt and he is very excited about the field trip.  He is pretty laid back and he goes with the flow.

I can understand why the sub-title is “A Comedy in Four Voices.”  There was plenty of humor to go around.  The scene with Sam and Octavia at the tombs was particularly funny. 

O’Connell does a wonderful job of describing historical Egypt during the modern times.  Reading about the Nile, the Sphinx, and the pyramids was so interesting.  I can’t believe these kids got to go on a field trip there!

I enjoyed this book and hope you will too.

RATING

5        Plot

4        Characters

5        Attention Grabbing

5        Girlie Meter

4        Ending

23      TOTAL

5        STARS