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Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9781589802544
ISBN number: 1589802543
Label: Pelican Publishing
Manufacturer: Pelican Publishing
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 224
Printing Date: April 05, 2005
Publishing house: Pelican Publishing
Age index: Young Adult
Sale Popularity Level: 407001
Studio: Pelican Publishing
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Product Description:
When his father relocates the family to Paradise to work for the mysterious Eden Corporation, Jack Barrett uncovers a sinister plot that threatens everyone he loves.
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Rated by buyers 
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Jack's father has always been a perfectionist, but lately, his need to control every aspect of the family's life has stepped up a notch. Mr. Barrett, Jack's dad, has been offered a wonderful opportunity with the company he works for, the Eden Corporation. Eden owns a gated village in Paradise, a nearby town, where only the most successful and devoted employees are invited to live. The village is all-inclusive and there is no need to ever leave. The village even has a school for the children of the employees.
Mr. Barrett's family isn't handling the news of the move very well. His wife has been drinking more and more since Mr. Barrett's controlling nature has intensified. Troy, the youngest child, has used his rebellious attitude to spark conflict within the household. Gram, Mr. Barrett's mother and the boys' biggest protector, doesn't mince words when it comes to how crazy she thinks moving the whole family to a strange community is, and Jack, the oldest son, tries to keep the peace by attempting to please his father and trying to keep Troy under control.
Eventually, the day comes and the family packs up and moves to Paradise. Jack's mother has gone ahead in order to get the house ready so it is just Mr. Barrett, Jack, Troy, and Gram following the moving van. Once they reach the entry gate, Jack sees a site that leaves him speechless. Jori is a beautiful girl that works at the entry gate of Paradise and a girl that he definitely wants to get to know better, but for some reason, Mr. Barrett doesn't want him to have anything to do with her. His exact words are, "She doesn't belong in Paradise." This statement is just one of the things Jack, Troy, and Gram consider strange when they get settled in their new community.
Everyone seems too happy, their mother hasn't been seen since they've arrived, and Mr. Eden, the owner of the Eden Corporation, has been sneaking into the Barrett's house at night and taking Troy somewhere after knocking him out so he won't wake up. The boys, with a lot of help from Gram and Jori, endeavor to get to the bottom of all the mysteries and find a way out of Paradise.
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE is a science fiction thriller reminiscent of The Stepford Wives. It was awarded the Hal Clement Award for best science fiction novel for young adults in the United States. This is Steven Layne's very first novel and is far from perfect, but at the same time, has many characteristics that will appeal to young readers.
Reviewed Author name: Karin Perry
Rated by buyers 
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What would someone do if their father was crazy and made them move to a city where everyone is perfect, and then they found out they could not leave? Jack Barrett, Troy Barrett, and Gram Barrett faced this in the interesting book This Side of Paradise by Steven L. Layne.
The Barretts were a happy family until Mr. Barrett started working for Mr. Eden and forced his family to move to Paradise which is owned by Mr. Eden. Soon they learn about a secret that could destroy their lives.
One thing that I thought was fantastic was the plot of This Side of Paradise. It always made me want to read more. An example is when Jack found out that he could not leave Paradise and I wanted to know why so it made me keep reading. I liked the theme of this book because it taught me that not everything should be perfect and that not everything can be perfect. Finally, I liked the characters. My favorite character is Gram. I liked her because she was caring and knew a lot about people even before she met them. She showed this when Troy got beat up by his father and she helped him and cared for him.
This book would be appropriate for young teens. I really enjoyed This Side of Paradise by Steven L. Layne and I know someone else will too.
Rated by buyers -
'This Side of Paradise' by Steven Layne was a very good book. It's about two brothers named Jack and Troy who move to a community named Paradise because their dad gets a new job. Everything in Paradise seems like it's perfect; but it's not. The plot of this book was very suspenseful and mysterious. There are many cliffhangers that keep you wanting to read more of this book.
Rated by buyers -
I read this boook two years ago and loved it. I would have given it a '5' and ranted on how good it is. It was never my favorite book however, I read Lord of the Rings in [...] (before the movies) and that will forever remain my favorite book. However, this book is more of an introduction to suspense than a great novel. It's intened for preteens who havn't seen much great literature, and are easily entranced by stories more complicated than what they have been reading at the time. The perfect ages for this book are 10, 11, and 12.
The book isn't as elequent as most other novels, It does stick to simple words. This isn't neccisarily a bad thing, however. Jack's mindset seems to be more of a preteen than of a Junior. This makes it better for the preteen audiance however. And yes, this book comes with cheesy teen romance.
The Author seems to drop TOO many hints. Reading it again, it seems a little too obvious what is going to happen. He italicises key words, and the 'gollum' scene is almost painfully obvious.
My main problem with the book is the author can't seem to decide wheather he wants the story to be dark, or humourous. My least favorite part of the book is when they are in the middle of the climax, and suddenly out of the blue there is a humourous scene with Troy. It is completley out of place and irksome.
In conclusion, this book is an enjoyable read. If you buy it, you won't regret it. It probaly deserves 3 stars, but it's written for preteens, I'll give the author an extra star because it fits the audiance. Like Harry Potter, it's not great literature, but an enjoyable read.
Rated by buyers 
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This Side of Paradise is an appallingly dreadful book by Steven L. Layne. It is about two incredibly brainless sons, Troy and Jack; their insane perfectionist of a father, Mr. Barret, A.K.A. Mr. Eden; and an annoying grandmother, irritatingly called Gram. This perfect example of how not to write starts out with a normal enough family. But soon the mother starts drinking and fighting with the father, who proceeds to have her murdered and replaced with a robot. Then the father forces the family to move to a seemingly perfect place called Paradise. Or at least, it was perfect until the family moves there. That's when Paradise crashes. First the reader finds out that everyone in Paradise is a robot except for the protagonists...and Mr. Barret/Eden (I honestly think that the author based him on Tolkien's Gollum, as both characters have split personalities: an almost good side and a completely evil side, both argue with themselves when they think that no one else is near, and the bad side is dominant in both cases). Eventually the story comes to the end that the reader had both predicted and longed for from the very first page. Basically, the father dies, Paradise collapses, and they all live happily ever after.
My very first problem with this tale is that it has very poor word choice. It uses short, simple words that belong in children's books, not books written for teens. The largest word in This Side of Paradise is probably evasive, which is a word that any village idiot would know.
Next, the characters are very poorly developed. The author simply tells the reader a few useless facts about the characters, instead of showing more important facts. The book says, "My grandma Katy, a spry and sassy seventy-two-year-old known to us as Gram..." This is a very poor description of a character that should be developed far more, as she is one of the protagonists. The book then says:
Actually, Troy is very intelligent; he just uses his intelligence in the wrong way. He challenges the system- school, sports, home, and life. He can't accept the way things are to the degree that the average person can, and this puts him in conflict with most adults. He questions everything and everyone. Mom used to say that he came out of the womb and immediately requested a copy of the doctor's credentials.
That brief description is all of the information that the book gives the reader. It is not nearly enough to actually give one a mental image of any sort. But then again, there isn't even a single point in the whole miserable story that does. That definitely goes to show how absolutely pitiful the author's prose is.
Also, the author uses far to many italics and puts quotation marks anywhere and everywhere, whether they should be there or not. It is almost as though that was the only way the author could give any expression to his characters' dialogue. However, he uses them in middle of sentences where they completely destroy the flow of the text. It actually looks as though he simply went through the book and chose random words to italicize. For example, in the passage above, Layne simply chose the word everyone, even though to the reader's eye this choice makes no sense and simply distracts, instead of emphasizing or giving expression. In the author's note he chooses some more arbitrary words to italicize. The book says, "Major thanks to Ryan McNamara and Nate Baron." He simply chose to italicize the words major thanks for no apparent reason. The book also says:
"I get it!" I jumped in. "An employee could buy the house from Mr. Eden at the fantastic low price, then decide to leave Paradise and resell it to him at the fair market price - which would obviously be much higher!"
Again, haphazard words are italicized for no apparent reason, leaving the reader in doubt of whether or not the author actually knows how to use italics properly. As for the quotation marks, they are used in the same way as the italics- seemingly to emphasize unsystematic words. The book says,
Whatever the case, my brother's school suspensions for "failure to show proper respect to authority figure" were paralleling my mother's trips to the liquor cabinet - which were a source of great concern for all of us.
It is seriously as though the author simply chose a series of chance words that happened to be in the way of his quotation-marking passion.
Finally, This Side of Paradise is dreadfully elongated, dragged out until the reader is at a point where they would gladly go on their knees to the author to beg for mercy from the awfulness of his writing. The ideal length for a book as bad as this one would be about a page, the maximum amount of time that it takes the reader to discover the flawed nature of the author's writing, rather than 215 pages. I find it impossible to comprehend why a book in which the reader can see the ending coming after the very first couple of pages must be dragged out for that long.
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