If you can get past some really horrible bullying, this is a good book. Taken from someone who was bullied through school then went onto abusive relationships.

Richard and Chrissie are fraternal twins and Richard has always felt protective over his twin sister Chrissie especially more so these days as at their old school, Chrissie ended up being bullied and tried to commit suicide and Richard blames himself as the girl was his best friend. This book starts with the twins having to move to another new school and a boarding one at that as their father has a new job and wants Richard to befriend his boss's son Spencer. Richard's current girlfriend Beth can't stand Chrissie and tries to warn Richard how manipulative she is but he doesn't listen. Instead, he begs Beth to give Chrissie a makeover for their new school. The twins start and soon Chrissie has found a new friend with Spencer and Richard is busy joining new clubs. That is until he is accused of stealing and this then spirals to Richard breaking "the code" which is a private school way of life. You know the age-old of what happens in school, stays in school. As the book goes along, we see Chrissie rising and Richard getting bullied even worse and the pinnacle of the story is we see Richard on his death bed. With none of his family believing him, can Richard get his old friends Beth, Stew, and Dave to help him prove to the world and his parents that Chrissie and Spencer are behind everything before it's too late and the tables are reversed and Richard starts thinking suicide is his only option? Find out in this edgy YA novel "School Monitor" by Alex Dunn.

I was given an opportunity to read School Monitor through a Goodreads Giveaway, as well as from NetGalley. I voluntarily chose to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

Richard has always felt that he must protect his fragile and socially awkward twin sister Chrissie. He would rather make movies and hang out with his friends most times, but Richard's attention always seems to be directed towards his sister. When the pair are sent to St. Bart’s, a prestigious boarding school with a stellar reputation, will Richard be the one who needs protecting?

School Monitor is completely unrealistic on so many levels. Bullying does exist, but the extent of it does not seem plausible. The author makes it seem like there are no authority figures around, as the bullies are able to do whatever they want to whomever they wish. Money and intimidation after the fact is definitely possible, but I doubt that the adults would let the situation get so out of hand. The eventual ending of the novel was telegraphed early on, so the book held no mystery or surprise for me.

As School Monitor is geared toward a younger audience, I would have liked to see more of a message at the ending. The massive amount of bullying in this book is not balanced by lessons learned. Each page seems to be another day spent on the same subject and the book suffered because of this. For these reasons, I would not recommend School Monitor to other readers.

I don't know what to think about this. I had to stop it at 18% because I couldn't make myself read the words "grumble", "Echo" etc. to describe talking anymore. It was getting on my nerves - what's wrong with just saying said?! I didn't like Rich, who is the narrator, and Chrissie, his twin sister, was weird. I skimmed the rest of the book because I was sort of intrigued about what was going to happen between Chrissie and Rich at their new school but I wasn't that impressed.

This was certainly a page turner and I found there was a definite divide between characters you loved and characters you hated. I would have liked to see a bit more middle ground. Shouldn't I feel more sympathy for those characters that have been damaged by their lives so badly that they would treat others so horribly? I think it was this that meant I didn't fully believe the book (unless it is my desperate hope that humans can't really be that vile?)
I liked the narrator which always helps and enjoyed the way he often threw your own doubts about his behaviour back at you in his own narrative.

The book worked because what he went through was so awful and so I need to forgive the feeling that perhaps it was a little over the top and just enjoy it for what it was - a gripping read that got your emotions going. It definitely does tackle the horror of bullying and the lows it can drive its victims too, and also recognised the most important role in situations like this- that of the silent witness.

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. The format made it hard to read and I wasn't able to finish. The story had an interesting concept however, the writing style felt very disjointed and while I thought Chrissie was an interesting character, I wasn't engaged enough to get fully invested in the story.

Stereotypical with a lack of character development and various plot holes. The writing style from the very start didn't quite work for me and I'll put half the blame on the writer and the rest on the e-book because of its weird formatting. Overall, just something which wasn't my cup of tea.

I really didn't like school monitor - I only got about 2 chapters in when I realized that the writing style was going to make it very difficult for me to finish this novel as I didn't like it at all. I noticed that there were a lot of formatting and narration issues that made me dislike this book for example, the dialogue is overly fancy when it doesn't need to be and new narrators didn't have a line break between them and the previous one they just run on making it extremely difficult to work out who is actually narrating the story. This book is also guilty of one of my pet hates which is info dumping. There is so much info dumped on us in the first few paragraphs that it takes away the tension and shock of some of the information like when we learn her sister committed suicide there is no tension or build up so we don't really care about this even though it is a significant event in the protagonists' life. Overall, there is so much wrong with this novel I could get into or connect to the characters so it literally felt like a chore to read.

Great read, the story grips you early in with depth if characters and plot, portraying brilliantly the impact of being bullied and fast decline of mental resilience

This book was absolutely surpprising. I never thought that bullying could escalate so much because of a misunderstanding and the degree of obsession was crazy. The bond between the twins was very strong more on one part than the other, i would like to read more about this author in the future.

This book caught my attention instantly because of interesting plot. However, I'm not that excited to read it after reading the first chapters.

Chrissie and Richard are twins. They are 14 year olds, in Year Ten and their Dad decided to transfer them to St. Bartolomew's to befriend Doug Spencer's son, Robert.

Richard or Rich loves to remake movies with his friends and uploaded it online. He easily makes friends. Everyone likes him. He has talent in film making and has a potential internship in BBC until something happened to him in St. Bart's and every one turn against him.

Chrissie was a victim of bullying at Goldmeads (her old school). She doesn't get along with anyone and acts weirdly. She's obsessed with Rich's attention.

What I instantly noticed in my copy is that there's Chapter 1 and then jumped to Chapter 4. There are no Chapter 2 & 3.

The story is slow and couldn't find the depth of the story. It is also confusing because of too many characters in it. It also made me think if I made a right choice to read this one because it is not exciting as I've read the synopsis plus I find the story cliché.

The story mainly focuses on student bullying. How parents are blinded with what is happening inside St. Bart's. How teachers are closing their eyes with bullying because they are bribe by powerful parents.

This book has potential and I think with few revisions this will be good. What keeps me to continue reading this is I want to prove my hunch of who set-up Rich. And it is proven.

This was an interesting premise, though I think the tension was a bit too slow to build.

I found it difficult to empathise with the main character as he was not particularly likeable.

I also found it relatively easy to guess who the person responsible for the various incidents was, which somewhat spoiled what could have been an interesting final twist.

However, I thought the book was well written, and it was an enjoyable light read.

This book was well written.
I just didn't like ANY of the characters and truly hated most of them.
The main character was an arrogant, egoistical bully-enabler who thought things like "I don't care what the films and songs say - it's not all right for guys to cry." or "As a guy, you're supposed to be brave. Fights are a rite of passage; guys brag, relive, and provoke, and we shrug off a punch even if it hurts like hell, but we all get scared, even if we're in the pack picking on the runt."

So, none of the characters had ever heard of these things called empathy and compassion, so in exchange I had none for them. I got so angry at times, I had to read entire books in between chapters which is something I never do.
I couldn't find redeeming qualities in the characters, even the most bullied one, Hermit, was unlikable...
I don't know what to add, except maybe : sorry? ...

I only got a couple of pages into this book before the writing style put me off reading it . I don't like writing bad reviews, as I know how hard it is to write a novel, but I really struggled to get past the narrative errors at the beginning of the book.

The overuse of fancy dialogue tags ('I agree, Dad sneers, Dad retorts, she sniffs etc) was a little jarring, and I don't know whether it was just my copy, but the ebook was not formatted correctly - new speakers did not start on a fresh paragraph and sometimes just ran on the same line, which was very confusing. I also noticed the use of incorrect words (for example the author uses 'till' instead of 'until'), which came across as an error, as opposed to an attempt at teenage dialect. .

Another thing that bothered me was the constant referral to the dad's 'Blackberry' in the first few paragraphs (the narrator references it after almost every single line of the dad's dialogue). I know it has been added in to highlight how the dad was too busy on his phone to listen properly, but it felt a little repetitive. One mention would have been sufficient enough to let me, the reader, know that the dad was distracted.

I think too much information was given away within the first few paragraphs. We are immediately told that the sister tried to commit suicide. There is no build up or tension and would have had more impact had we been introduced to her character properly first. As well as this, the reference to her suicide attempt felt forced, especially as the information is relayed to us via a conversation between the protagonist and his mother - they are discussing it purely for the benefit of the reader as they both already know what happened, so it's unrealistic that they would talk about it in such detail.

To end on a positive note, the premise was intriguing and I especially liked the description of the book - the notion that the twin sister has an 'unhealthy obsession' with her brother was interesting to me. Extra points awarded for the protagonist being a twin, as I myself am a twin!

Thanks for the opportunity to read the book.

Creative,engaging and lovely. I enjoyed the book very much and would recommend it to everyone. The plot was unique with witty characters and a strong plot

I really loved the book and I felt like I could connect to Jarvis because I have younger siblings who adore me. I really loved the book however I wish we knew if Jarvis ever succeeded in filming. There was also some editing mistakes but besides that I loved it.

Entertaining, quick read for the YA set about bullying in a posh private school. I personally found parts of this a little hard to follow due to the number of characters, but the story flowed well and you really felt for the title character.

A great book with a wonderful narrator that moves the book along wonderfully.