Tag Archives: Parker Peevyhouse

Review: The Echo Room by Parker Peevyhouse

The Echo Room by Parker PeevyhouseThe Echo Room
Parker Peevyhouse
Tor Teen
Published on September 11, 2018

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About The Echo Room
Rett wakes on the floor of a cold, dark room. He doesn’t know how he got there, only that he’s locked in. He’s not alone—a girl named Bryn is trapped in the room with him. When she finds a mysterious bloodstain and decides she doesn’t trust Rett, he tries to escape on his own—

Rett wakes on the floor of the same cold, dark room. He doesn’t trust Bryn, but he’ll have to work with her if he ever hopes to escape. They try to break out of the room—

Rett and Bryn hide in a cold, dark room. Safe from what’s outside.

But they’re not alone.

My Review
I feel like this book should be an episode of Black Mirror. (Disclaimer: I’ve only seen two episodes of Black Mirror because I’m waaaaaay too much of a fraidy cat for things that qualify as horror-ish.). The Echo Room definitely had that otherworldly, spooky, outside-the-box feel to it. I loved that!

While some parts of the story are simple—a boy, a girl, a quest to find an item—other parts are not so simple. Rett and Bryn have really fractured memories. They make assumptions from the clues around them, but we start to piece things together almost before they do, which creates all sorts of interesting nail-biting tension.

The beginning has a kind of repetitive rhythm to it (on purpose), but the way it’s written, you notice different things each time a repetition happens, so it feels like peeling back layers of the mystery, and that feeling kept me reading page after page.

I found Rett and Bryn both really likeable. There’s a good balance between the plot with its sci-fi elements and the characters, which is a must for me when I read sci-fi. So The Echo Room definitely satisfied there.

Though this is a very different kind of story, I think The Echo Room would appeal to readers who like Hayley Stone or Claudia Gray. I highly recommend it.

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Cultural Elements
Major characters are white or not physically described.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Fewer than ten instances of profanity.

Romance/Sexual Content
Brief kissing between boy and girl.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. A man receives a head injury from another person. At one point, a boy discovers a mutilated dead body. Description is brief. A flare gun is used as a weapon.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Review: Where Futures End by Parker Peevyhouse

Where Futures End
Parker Peevyhouse
Kathy Dawson Books
Published February 9, 2016

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Where Futures End follows the interconnected stories of five teens. Dylan finds a way to cross into another world. Years later, Brixney tries to use social media to keep from being imprisoned in a debtor’s colony. Years after that, Epony and her boyfriend craft new identities for themselves as reality stars only to learn the secure future they crave will cost them what matters most: their authenticity and their love for each other. Later still Reef embarks on a dangerous mission via virtual reality game in an attempt to win an escape from a terror-stricken city. At last, Quinn meets a stranger who reveals to her a terrible choice, one that links her story back to all the others before.

Confession: I actually read this book several months ago and have been horribly slow at posting my review on my blog, which is terrible because I loved it so much!

This story is unlike anything I’ve read before. At first, because it’s so different, I worried that I wouldn’t like it. It seems like this really cerebral type of story, and I feel like those kinds of stories often have shallow characters or often let the events overshadow the characters. Where Futures End has great characters, though. I was hooked on Dylan from the very opening pages. As his story ended, I was nervous again about starting Brixney’s story, because I worried I wouldn’t like her as much as I liked Dylan.

But I did. Every time the story switched to a new piece (it’s written like five shorter stories one right after another) of the story, I fell in love with a completely new set of characters and a completely new story world. I loved the way each story reached back to the ones that came before in some way, so you really had the sense of history impacting the future.

I really enjoyed reading this one, and definitely recommend it, especially to sci-fi readers. If you enjoyed the movie Cloud Atlas, you definitely need to read this book. If you like books that are really unusual and unique or have a puzzle or moral dilemma to them, definitely get yourself a copy of Where Futures End.

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Strong profanity used infrequently. (Fewer than ten times.)

Romance/Sexual Content
Kisses and hints at more between Epony and her boyfriend. Reef takes a wife because it helps him gain better standing in the online game, but he wonders if he’ll be able to consummate the relationship. (He doesn’t.)

Spiritual Content
The human world connects to another alien world, but only those with a strong vorpal, kind of an aura or energy can cross between the human world and the other.

A man catches Brixney eating ice cream nuggets and asks if she paid for them. She comments that he prays to God she has. Later she remembers a game she and Brandon play where they imitate the painting in the Sistine Chapel—one as Adam, the other as God, reaching toward one another.

Violent Content
Reef faces battles in the virtual game he plays.

Drug Content
Epony’s boyfriend tells her that sometimes he gets drunk when he hangs out with older boys.

Reef struggles with an addiction to resin, something he started young, after witnessing his mother do the same. Stopping will damage his organs.