Peak - Roland Smith

[goodreads]

Title: Peak
Author: Roland Smith
Genre: YA
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 246
Date read: September

After Peak Marcello is arrested for scaling a New York City skyscraper, he's left with two choices: wither away in Juvenile Detention or go live with his long-lost father, who runs a climbing company in Thailand. But Peak quickly learns that his father's renewed interest in him has strings attached. Big strings. He wants Peak to be the youngest person to reach the Everest summit--and his motives are selfish at best. Even so, for a climbing addict like Peak, tackling Everest is the challenge of a lifetime. But it's also one that could cost him his life.

Fascinating book. I wasn't many pages into it before I was hooked and simply couldn't put it down. The writing was engaging and now I'm really keen to learn more about Mt. Everest.

Now that I stop to think about it, the plot in itself actually wasn't anything extraordinary. What captured me was the description of the life of a climber and all it takes to get from Base Camp to the summit of Mt. Everest. It's not just a straight climb up and down, but rather a yo-yo, getting closer to the top each time. I've always been fascinated by descriptions of how things work, so I think that's why this book really appealed to me.

I had a hard time putting it down, and an even harder time putting it out of my mind. I wasn't too thrilled by the ending, and am not sure how realistic it was, but other than that, it was a brilliant book.