It begins and ends with an ordinary kitchen knife.Paul tries to live life under the radar. He's not a jock, he's not a freak, he's not one of Roth's bullies - he's a nobody, a loner, and it's better that way. But when Roth, a huge, hulking monster of a boy who's pure evil, has two of his thugs chuck gum in Paul's hair in class, Paul gets angry. A sin he knows won't go unnoticed by Roth.
But instead of beating him to a pulp after school, Roth gives Paul a package to deliver to Gobbo, the rival school's gang leader. Paul doesn't have a choice - if he doesn't do it, he's pretty sure Roth might kill him. Or worse. Paul doesn't know what's in the package, and he doesn't care - he just wants to be done with it.
But when Gobbo opens the package and sees what's inside, Paul knows he's been manipulated into started something that can't be stopped.
Anthony McGowan begins his novel with the knife that killed Paul. With it's blade slicing ever closer, looming over Paul's life, he recalls everything that happened to land him in that moment, where it's only him and the knife. Chronicling a normal boy's descent into chaos and violence he's tried so hard to rise above, The Knife That Killed Me is a taut, suspenseful read, the uncomfortable tension that rises with each of Paul's encounters with and almost-escapes from Roth designed to make you just as desperate as Paul for a way out. Check out this modern Lord of the Flies @ the library!
Megan
(now reading the new Nicholas Sparks novel, Safe Haven)