Book Review of See You Later by Christopher Pike
Author Name: Christopher Pike
ISBN: 0-671-02025-0
Publisher: Archway Paperback
Type of book: Young adult
Year it was published: April 1990
Summary:
Mark has just graduated from high school and has just fallen in love for the first time. THe girl's name is Becky. Unfortunately for Mark, Becky has a boyfriend. Mark tries his best, but he is unable to win Becky for himself. THen Mark meets a young couple: Vincent and Kara. Both look extremely familiar to him, although he could swear he's never seen them before. They quickly become good friends. Kara does not want Mark to give up on Becky. In fact, Kara is obsessed that Mark and Becky get together, and she comes up with an elaborate scheme to break up Becky and her boyfriend. Mark thinks the scheme is cruel. He tries to stop kara. He doesn't succeed. Suddenly Becky is a free woman, and Mark can't help but ask her out on a date. THen things start to get very strange. AN evil man appears out of nowhere. Somebody is kidnapped. Somebdoy is tortured. Kara knows what is happening, but she refuses to talk. SHe has good reason not to talk...no one would believe the story she has to tell. But in the end, Mark does believe her, when all he loves appears to be lost, and the world stands on the verge of destruction.
Characters:
The characters struck me as one dimensional and I felt that this book is more of a tell rather than show variety. I had a difficult time differentiating the actions between Kara and Becky, and it would be nice if more instances of when Becky and Mark hung out were shown instead of told. As it is, I barely got to know Becky and the reader has to rely on Mark's testimony.
Theme:
I think one of the direct themes of the book is to sometimes learn from your younger self and try to let your hatred go. I cannot think of other themes sorry to say.
Plot:
This is written as a first person narrative from Mark's point of view. I'm not a fan of philosophy unfortunately, and towards the very end it veered off into philosophical tangents as Mark tries to understand what happened. I also felt that Pike should have written a sequel or something so we can find out exactly how Mark is revived and so forth.
Author Information:
Christopher Pike wrote 30+ novels mainly for young adults, the most famous or well known one is The Last Vampire Saga, Final Friends and Remember Me, and his real name is Kevin McFadden. One of his books, Fall Into Darkness was created into a movie. Unfortunately he doesn’t have a website, but there is a fan club that is devoted to him. (http://www.christopherpikefanclub.com/ )
Opinion:
This was the very first Christopher Pike I have read, and while it had great start and middle, the ending sucked in my opinion because it became confusing and it was hard to understand. If you're looking for Pike books to read, I wouldn't recommend reading this one first. If you're not a big philosophy or science fiction, then this book isn't very good. If you are, by all means go ahead, but I am warning that it gets confusing and complicated, and frustratingly enough, Pike seems to have left enough room for a sequel that never came to be.
3 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)
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