Lois Duncan (1934–2016)

I liked this book - I liked the pacing for the most part, the story was interesting and engaging, and I even liked the way everything wrapped up at the end, but there were just a couple of things that kept it from being a 5 star read for me. First, I think most readers will be able to guess the angle with the mother way, way before the "reveal." And second, I really, really wish that the romance between the main character and the cop had been developed before they went to look for the kidnapped children. That just would have made more sense to me and not made those two characters look quite so jerky for a little while. I mean, they are on a desperate race to find a van full of kidnapped children whose lives may be in danger - one of the kids being the cop's nephew - and they stop to take the time to sort of hook up? How selfishly shallow. Plus it caused a pause in the action that made me roll my eyes. Other than those two things, I really did enjoy the book and happily recommend it to anyone who enjoys YA lit with a little mystery and a hint of the supernatural.… (mer)

This was the first book we read for my banned book club. The writing is very easy to get into and it's a quick read. I do think it will spark lots of discussions, which is great. This is the perfect type of book to read and discuss in a book club or classroom.

One downside is there's too many characters' POV and it's a short book so it makes it hard to connect with some of the characters and they sometimes fade into the background so you forget who they are. At the end when they mentioned Holly's name again I thought, "wait, was Holly part of the club this whole time?" That's how little we get of her POV. There are 10 girls in the club to begin with and having that many POVs for a book that's less than 300 pages makes it impossible to give each character enough time to feel like a fully fleshed out character, so some of them end up feeling flat. This would have been better if it just focused on maybe 3-4 girls max.

The pacing of the story felt uneven. Based on the synopsis, I thought the revenge schemes would have taken place earlier, but it took a long time before the first revenge scheme happened. Then after the first one occurred, the rest of them happened pretty quickly and then the book ended, so the ending did feel rushed. I am glad we got a little bit of an epilogue cause it did give some closure & resolution as to what happened with all the characters. Without that epilogue, it would have been a more open ended story, which is something I hate.

Overall, despite its flaws it is an engaging story and will spark a lot of good discussions. There isn't much graphic violence or any explicit sex scenes so this could work for younger teens or pre-teens as well.

Content warnings: Domestic violence and child abuse, suicide attempt, attempted sexual assault, teen pregnancy and discussion about abortion, emotionally abusive relationship between one of the teen couples, emotional abuse and manipulation of students by a teacher, sexism/misogyny, eating disorders, torture of a teen by peers, animal experimentation, and murder/attempted murder of abusive parent.… (mer)