Review: 13 Minutes by Sarah Pinborough
Reviews / June 28, 2016

13 minutes s a psychological thriller that looks at life through the eyes of a bunch of 16 year olds. It’s one of those books that, reading as an adult, makes me simultaneously almost giddy with relief that I’m no longer at high school followed by this horrible prickly sensation about maybe never truly knowing another person. As you can gather from the book jacket the story starts with 16 year old Natasha Howland (Tasha) being pulled from a freezing cold river. For a few minutes, in fact 13 to be precise, Tasha actually died before she was revived and taken to hospital. When she eventually awakens she has no memory of the events that led to her near drowning experience but given that she was in the local woods in the early hours of the morning, with a text from an unknown number luring her to the spot the police are a little suspicious of events. What really worked for me with this book is the deceptively simple writing and the easy way that the characters and their histories are so easily brought to life on the page. This is truly a mean girls story where the popularity stakes…