That tile is suspiciously close to the title of a very old, but famous porn movie starring Marilyn Chambers who was previously the face of a wholseome detergent. The novel itself is nowhere near as inventive as that movie was. Unfortunately, it's your typical YA love-triangle featuring a disaffected high-schooler slash impoverished under-achiever with at least one parent dead, who has a lifelong male friend that she has no interest in, and has a rich kid new acquaintance that she flips off, but becomes fascinated with. Yep, it's your usual unoriginal, braindead YA story that you've already read to death a score of times.
On the face of it, the actual plot sounded interesting. The idea is that there's this game which the main character is interested in, because it could net her a monetary prize which she and her widowered dad badly need. You have to solve one or more puzzles in this creepy old mansion to earn the cash, so she naturally picks her best friend to take up the challenge with.
Completely out of the blue, the high-school quarterback suddenly asks her to be his partner in this same game - which is when she flips him off. The problem is that this guy has shown zero interest in her until now, and suddenly he's calling her on her phone because he can't think of anyone better than her to solve puzzles with? It made zero sense. Where did he get her phone number? Why does he think someone he doesn't even know will make the best partner?! Why is he remotely interested in this whiny brat of a person who is technically an adult, but who behaves like a juvenile?
The story went downhill even from there. It appears to be written for an age group that's younger than the ages of the main characters - like middle grade instead of YA. The main character, Megan Covington isn't even a nice person. I didn't like her. She was cruel, and whiny and dishonest. At one point she tells us that her best friend Brekken is doing their geometry homework, which she will copy afterwards, but later she says he's always been a good friend to her by doing things "like keeping me from cheating throughout school and helping me study." So in short, she's both a cheat and a liar!
So the two of them go to this mansion where the quest is being held and like the imbeciles that they are, they tell no one where they're going. They're both over eighteen so they can sign the quest contract, but neither of them reads the small print and the frosty woman who takes them down to the basement offers them no details or warnings. Frosty lets them into the game area by opening a solid metal door with three bolts and a lock on the outside. None of this even remotely bothers the two shit-for-brains main characters. Beyond that door there is a glaring white corridor with colored doors along it (guess which one they pick!). The doors are these:
- Blue with a nautical theme featuring a pearl - worth $5,000
- Brown with underground carvings and featuring gemstone - worth $10,000
- Green with a tree carving and featuring a seed - worth $10,000
- Red featuring a ruby heart in a crown - worth $25,000
- Orange with flames pictured on it that are actually hot - worth $30,000
- White with a dove and feathers - worth $500,000
- Black metal with carvings - worth one million
Without asking any more questions, they let themselves be locked in. They have to choose a door to begin, and unsurprisingly, given the novel's title, they settle on the green door. They slap on these bracelets that allow them to pass through the force-field at the door that prevents other things from escaping (none of which puts these two idiots off), and they find themselves in a forest where they're almost immediately attacked by large wolves, but they're rescued by other animals who proceed on two legs and speak vernacular English. At first this struck me as silly, but there's actually an explanation for it. They chase off the wolves, but they arrest the two high-schoolers since they're illegally in a non-human part of the forest. None of this even remotely boggles the mind of these two fuckwits.
Naturally in this same environment is the rich jock, with the unimaginative name of Carter, who completes the inevitable triangle. He tells them he came in there with a girl named Courtney and they were attacked by those same wolves. Courtney was killed. Instead of immediately leaving the quest to report this girl's death, these frigging morons decide to continue with the quest! Carter is supposed to be the unexpectedly nice guy. He talks Courtney into playing this dangerous and deadly game with him, and when his partner dies, the very last thing he thinks of doing, is taking responsibility and reporting her death to the authorities or to her parents. He's an asshole, period.
That's when I quit reading. It's too stupid to live and should be burned with fire. These people are idiots. They're irresponsible. They're boringly predictable, and there's no way in hell I was going to continue reading this dumbass novel let alone continue on the "The Red Door" or "The Black Door" or any other stupid volume in this series. I condemn it.
