Spurious Scrapper: Book Review (2/2)

Spurious Scrapper, written by George Veck, is a gruesome, North Wales, Crime-fiction, showing the harsh sides of life. In this story, we follow main character, Chrissy, a deviant drug dealer following all the nasty ways of life. Chrissy's life consists of non-stop partying, daily drug and alcohol intake, violence and deceit, until he finds his pure, rule-follower housemate, Sam, dead in his room after a drug overdose, drugs which Chrissy supplied him with. Chrissy begins to turn his life around through the guilt, but Sam's cousins take it into their own hands to make Chrissy's life a misery.

Introduction

As this was the second book of Veck's I have read, I knew not to expect a cosy crime/ mystery book. This book had the same qualities as the last book, 'One Visit' , which were the glossary in the back describing the slang words and welsh translations and the accuracy of dialogue and descriptions. I did find myself a lot more confused about this book, particularly when the boys were using tactics against Chrissy, I found that there wasn't a lot of information as to why, but the end of the book did explain it quite well. I also found keeping up with these characters was a lot harder to me than the last book, as there was a lot more to keep track of in my opinion, which also didn't allow me to connect with the characters as well. I did like the emotion that this book gave me, there were a lot of ups and downs keeping me reading, particularly on Chrissy's life path,(I really wanted things to go well for him). I did find that this ending was a lot more easily predictable, perhaps because I had gotten used to Veck's style, but there was also aspects that I didn't predict and a few lessons throughout.

Pros

• Love the writing style and references to UK life.

Cons

• I wanted to connect with the characters more.

• Third person and present tense writing.

Conclusion

To conclude, Spurious Scrapper is a book filled with the gruesome parts of life, that many live with daily. There are a lot of trigger warnings, which include: drug and alcohol use, death by overdose, homophobia, violence and harassment, swearing and vulgar language, sex, mention of mental health (particularly OCD and depression), self-harm, talk of sexual assault and abuse, torture, so if you feel any of those topics may be harmful to you right now, this book may not be for you. I would recommend this book to young and older adults, particularly in the UK ,as the book makes many references to UK culture that some may find confusing. I rate this book a 3/5 stars, because I didn't enjoy reading it as much as I did the first book and felt it was missing more.

To anyone who has read this book, feel free to comment your opinion in the comments and to anyone wanting to read this book, I hope I helped you come to your decision. I would greatly appreciate if you would consider following and sharing my blog, joining my book club group if you liked this post, and contact me with any requests or questions you may have. Also feel free to follow my social pages, linked at the top of this page, for more bookish content!

This blog post is the second blog post written in review of George Veck's books. In the first post I write a review for Veck's first Novel 'One Visit. To view the first post click here: https://teegan02.wixsite.com/bibliotherapy/post/one-visit-book-review-1-2