Tamar by Mel Peet

Tamar by Mel Peet

When I wrote this review I only had Turbulence left to read out of the five short listed books for the Carnegie Medal 2006. From reading the books, I thought that Tamar was going to be my favourite – (and it was!) It definitely was at the time, so unless Turbulence had something hidden within its pages, then I’d say Tamar had a pretty good chance of winning. (And it did too!)

My first impressions of Tamar were not too good – the blurb wasn’t very interesting, the front cover wasn’t very effective, and the topic of war didn’t really interest me. So… why did I like it? Well… although war is the obvious choice of genre for this book, I felt that it went well beyond that and touched on many different aspects, such as love, friendship, betrayal and hope, just to mention a few. The blend of fact and fiction, and past and present worked really well and the changes in time periods made it that little bit more interesting for the reader.

In addition to this, the characters were also another thing that the book brought to life. I felt a particularly strong bond with the characters, (especially Tamar,) as their descriptions, reactions and emotions were natural and well written. They were consistent and believable, and although they were living in a completely different time, I still felt it was easy to relate to how they felt and understand what they were thinking.

All the way through the book I was guessing and trying to predict the outcome – trying to solve the link between the items in the box for the young Tamar. However hard I tried though, I couldn’t get it. The plot was so ingeniously written and put across, that it simply kept me hooked right until the very end. In one part I felt that I could have possibly guessed the ending, as the book was concentrating on Dart’s feelings about Tamar a lot. Nevertheless, I wasn’t certain of the outcome, and was still drawn further through the book. By the time I reached the end, I had forgotten my previous predictions, and was completely shocked at the major twist planted right at the very end of the book.

In conclusion, I say this is my favourite of the Carnegie books for 2006. If I needed to change one thing, then I’d make the age rating for the book slightly higher. For all those people who detest war type books, don’t let the cover and blurb of this book put you off. Try it and see the difference! I recommend it to all readers aged from around 13/14+.