The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“You see Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel. So we have a perfect set-up here. The greed part - a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred. Plus fifty boxes of chocolates. The cruel part - watching two guys hitting each other, maybe hurting each other, while they're safe in the bleachers. That's why it works, Carter, because we're all bastards."

Trinity is the best college prep school in the area, it’s why kids choose to attend the private Catholic school. What the kids don’t choose is to defy The Vigils, a secret organization within the school with a hold on faculty and students alike. The Vigils hand out “assignments” to students to carry out that tend to shake up the already unstable environment of the school. These assignments, however, toe the line between inappropriately funny and cruelly unusual. And the students of the school don’t dare oppose orders due to a (un)healthy fear of some of the group’s more sadistic members. When the school’s annual chocolate sale comes around, freshman Jerry Renault takes his assignment a little far and must face the wrath of corrupt students and staff at Trinity.

Throughout the book, I was constantly reminded of the storyline in Cruel Intentions. The wide range of characters the author uses adds a depth to the story without convoluting it. At times, it would have been nice to have more of a background to some of the key players to gain a better understanding of the reasons behind their actions, but for the brevity of the novel the characterization seemed appropriate. 

I surprised myself by actually really liking this book upon finishing it. The first 50 or so pages had me skeptical, but I became sucked into the story the farther along I got. There’s a deeply dark depth to this story that, as a reader, you don’t expect from the seemingly simple plot of a chocolate sale. Cormier provides us with an all too true insight into humanity, relevant to readers of any age.