Roundabout by Rhiannon Lassiter

Publisher: Young Picador
Pub. Date: July 6, 2007

Age rank: Young Adult
Pages: 288
Format: paperback
Source: gift from friend

Magda, Tess and Seb should never have met. Beautiful Romany Magda is a traveller - she lives just outside town on an old caravan site. Tess is her fiery best friend. And Seb is the son of a rich businessman - he lives in a big house in the city. But as Magda and Seb are drawn to each other, meeting in hidden places, breaking unspoken boundaries, their lives - and those of the people close to them - set off down unexpected paths, especially when jealous Tess discovers Seb's secret. What will Magda do when she finds out just who is responsible for trying to get the travellers turfed off the land they have inhabited for so long? The decisions all the teenagers make now will have far wider-reaching effects than they could ever have imagined ...

I actually don't have much to say about this book. I feel kind of fooled by the synopsis. When I first read it I was really exicted because Roundabout seems like a promising book - mysterious and different. Sadly, it wasn't.

The plot is very simple. It revolves around the protest against the building of a new roundabout which will definitely pose a threat to lives of a group of people - known as Travellers. The book switches between stories of four different girls and some more characters and to me it is so draggy. I have to admit that I skipped a lot of parts to get to the better ones. I think if the writer had had spent more time on one character only and told the story in a better-developed way, it could have been so much cooler. Also, because the readers don't have a chance to get acquanted with the characters, everything about them is blurry, except Tess. Sometimes things happen so fast you don't know what is going on, yet other times unnecessary things last forever. And that is another problem of the book.

I'm so sorry to say that I will not recommend this book to anyone. It has potential, too bad nothing gets to the essential point to shine.

Rating: 1.5/5