Quick hit - Dooley Takes the Fall

Dooley Takes the Fall by Norah McClintock
4Q 3P; Audience: J/S (high school)

I thought I'd already started a blog post about this one, but apparently not. It's the last of the books I read a couple of months ago that I wanted to write about. I've been carrying it around with me for way too long, so this will be a very short post so I can get it out on the shelf where it belongs.

Dooley's had his brushes with the law. In fact, he's on parole and under the very strict guardianship of his uncle, a former cop. But sometimes a guy has to breathe freely for a bit before he submits to going back to life's narrow confines. So when Dooley gets out of work a bit early one night, he takes the opportunity to take the long way home. This isn't in his parole guidelines, so it's definitely not information he'd like to get out. But when he comes foot to face with a dead body, keeping quiet isn't an option. Will the police believe him when he tells them he had nothing to do with the guy's death? That he saw the guy jump (fall?) from the bridge, but that's all he knows? They might believe him, if it weren't for his police record - - and the fact that the kid's backpack and camera are missing, and his family swears he never went anywhere without them. Add to that the fact that, while it's true that Dooley didn't really know the kid, it's also true that they weren't exactly strangers either. When evidence suggests that this was a murder, not a suicide, Dooley is in it up to his eyeballs.

What stood out for me with this book is how real Dooley seemed. He knows he's messed up in the past, and he's trying to get his life back on track, but that doesn't mean he enjoys treading the straight and narrow. He struggles with it and he makes mistakes. Costly ones. It's hard for him to trust his uncle and the other people who say they're on his side, and it's hard for them to trust him, too. That leads to more complications. When Dooley begins to fall for a girl, he's afraid to pursue it, knowing that she'd never fall for a guy with a background like his. When he finds out who she really is, he's more afraid than ever to tell her the whole truth. But again, that turns out to be a big mistake, given that she has ties to the dead boy.

Through it all, Dooley wants to do the right thing and struggles with knowing what that is. He occasionally feels sorry for himself, but he also acknowledges that he's earned some of his problems because his past and present actions. His mistakes and his growth felt real and I got caught up in his story, hoping he'd be smart and trust the right people and fearing he wouldn't. The book moves along at a brisk pace and McClintock keeps the tension building and the twists coming. I thought the denouement was weaker than the rest of the book (a little more forced and somewhat less believeable), but it is still an excellent mystery/suspense novel.

Reading Roundup, Part One

I am so far behind on posting about books I've read recently (as in, anywhere from five weeks to five days ago) that I'm just going to do a quick write-and-run on several of them in one or two posts. If I try really, really hard, I can do this in two paragraphs or less per book. (Gee, there's a game show in that somewhere: "I can write that blog review in 100 words or less. No, I can write it in ninety words or less." "Reading Fool, write that review!" Oh, who am I kidding? 100 words or less? Maybe a 100 lines or less!)


Diamonds in the Shadows by Caroline Cooney
3Q 4P M/J/S

The Finch family is playing host to a family of refugees from Africa, and Jared is not happy about it. He particularly doesn't like having to share his room and his life with the teenage boy, Mattu. But that soon becomes just background noise to all the other things going on: How can the father, Andre, get a job, when he has no hands? And why doesn't he have hands? Why do Andre and Celeste ignore Alake, their daughter? And why doesn't Alake speak or even look at anyone? What does Mattu have in that box he carries around? Is it really just ashes? And how come this family doesn't act like any other family Jared's ever seen? Nobody else seems to be thinking about any of this. Jared's sister, Mopsy, is delighted to have a sister to take under her wing, and Jared's mother is in her element helping the family get settled in America. But Jared's father is so preoccupied with embezzlement from a fund he was responsible for he barely comes home anymore, and when he is home, he isn't paying attention. Jared feels that he's the only person in his family who is seeing the situation with clear eyes. But Jared doesn't know the half of it. In particular, he doesn't know that there was a fifth African refugee on the plane. And he doesn't know that the Amabo family has something that that refugee wants very, very badly. And though he heard the Refugee Aid Society representative say, "In a civil war, there are no good guys," he can't begin to imagine what that really means until the truth begins to come out. When that happens, Jared's indifference and frustration turn from shock to horror to terror.

Cooney knows how to get her readers' attention and keep it. And without being too graphic, she makes clear the horrors so many people in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and too many other places in Africa have experienced in recent years. She makes you feel for her characters, even when you don't necessarily like or admire them. However, I did find some aspects of the story a little hard to swallow. In particular, I don't for a minute believe that the adults (especially Mom) would overlook the signs that something is strange about the Amabo family, especially when the kids pick up on it almost immediately. (Conveniently, they then seem to forget it until the climax.) But I am willing to overlook that and a few other things because this is a book that puts events of global importance into a situation and words that teens can relate to without being overly preachy and without sacrificing tension and drama.


My Life, the Musical by Maryrose Wood (Advance Reader's Copy)
3Q 4P M/J/S

"There's No Business Like Show Business" Annie Get Your Gun, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields. Emily and Philip are best friends. Their friendship began in the line for the first preview performance of the soon-to-be smash hit Broadway show Aurora. Both were blown away by the show, and as a result, every Saturday morning for the past three years, they've taken the train to New York City to stand on the rush line to buy two tickets to the show. Over the years, they've gotten to know Ian, an aspiring actor, Stephanie, one of the dancers in the show, and all the other regulars on the rush line. Even Marlena Ortiz, the star, knows who they are. Their lives revolve around Aurora. Every English essay Emily writes is about Aurora. Philip keeps extensive spreadsheets on every possible aspect of the show. They even have their own Aurora chat room. They know every word and every note of the show. So they are naturally devastated one Saturday morning when Ian reports that he has it on good authority that Aurora is about to close. How can that be? It's still playing to packed houses! But one of their rush line cohorts soon sets them straight. The person Ian heard the rumor from is full of baloney and always has been. The show isn't closing. Whew! Except...the rumor is true. The show is closing. It's shocking! It's a tragedy! It's ...imperative that they see every single performance they can possibly afford to see from here until the ::sob:: end.

Intertwined with all that drama is more drama. There's the mystery of who wrote Aurora - the book writer/composer/lyricist has never revealed who s/he is, not even when the show won multiple Tony Awards. Then there's the problem of how to afford tickets to a Broadway show every week without committing a felony and the problem of how to appease your English teacher, who is sick to death of hearing about Aurora this and Aurora that. And then there's the problem of what to do about an absentee mother and a jerk of a brother who insists that you're gay. Yeah. That's drama.

This is the kind of book I wanted to read as a teenager. It's a book for every kid who has ever fallen in love with theater, whether they want to be the star, the stage manager, or the devoted fan. Even better, it's written by someone who has been there, done that. (I got the ARC by correctly answering the question "What cult musical did I [the author] appear in on Broadway?" A quick web search turned up the answer, and it was pretty cool to find out that we had a mutual acquaintance, since someone I knew was in the show too.) Do I think the book is a little over the top? Yes. But I wasn't reading it for realism. I was reading it for fun, and I got that in spades. I'm also glad that I got faked out a couple of times, since it's nice when you can't correctly predict everything that's going to happen in a book. In particular, I appreciated that the ending leaves a couple of things undecided. Life is like that, but books rarely are. And it's a fun conceit to have the chapter titles be apropos titles of songs from various Broadway musicals.

(So much for keeping it to two paragraphs!)

Medieval Mystery

The Falconer's Knot by Mary Hoffman
3Q 3P M/J

Ah, what fools these mortals be! If only Silvano hadn't fallen in love (well, lust) with Angelica. If only Angelica hadn't been flattered by his attentions. But he did, and she was, and that's a problem, since Angelica is married (unhappily) to a wealthy merchant much older than she is. Now Angelica's husband is dead, Silvano's dagger is found buried in his chest, and Silvano has blood on his hands. Yes, the blood is Angelica's husband's. But Silvano is innocent of the murder. He merely found the man and tried to help him. But will anyone believe that, when it's known that Silvano was courting the man's wife? Not likely! Before anyone has a chance to arrest him, Silvano is shipped off in secret to take sanctuary in the Franciscan monastery in a city miles away.

Chiara is newly arrived at the convent of the Poor Clares. She has no vocation for such a life, but she also has no father and no dowry. What she does have is a brother who has no wish to share his life and goods with his sister. The sooner he can wash his hands of her, the better. And where else can he send her but to a convent? Chiara is miserable, but has no say in the matter. It is the fourteenth century, and women do as the men in the lives say they must.

As it happens, the convent is next door to the monastery. Chiara is outside when Silvano arrives. Her curiosity is instantly aroused. Who is this novice who arrives on a fine horse with a peregrine falcon on its saddle? He has neither the clothing nor the look of a true novice. But then again, she is hardly a true novice herself. She looks and she wonders, but she has little reason to expect that any of her questions will be answered.

But God does work in mysterious ways. Perhaps it is His hand that directs them both to the color rooms in their respective new homes, where they help make the colors used by some of the master artists of Renaissance Italy. Once made, these colors need to be delivered to the artists. As novices, both Silvano and Chiara are allowed off the grounds, and they are both selected to accompany the brother (friar) and sister (nun) making those deliveries. Of course, the proprieties must be observed. They should not speak to each other. In fact, they should not even look at each other. But of course they do. And they like what they see.

Much to the surprise of both, each is settling into their new lives with comparative ease. Both the brothers and the sisters are strict, but kind. And there is some comfort to be had in the order of the days, though there is also always a desire for freedom to live the lives they wish to live. But soon Silvano's newly calm and supposedly safe life is shattered by murder once again. A merchant visiting the monastery is found dead in his bed, also killed by a dagger to his chest. The monks begin to cast a wary eye on Silvano, for word of his true reason for being there has leaked out. Is Silvano a murderer after all?

But Silvano is not the only one at the monastery with a secret, and the murders don't stop at two. Silvano's sanctuary is no longer safe, for him or for anyone else. Silvano is determined to prove his innocence and discover who is defiling this sacred place, and Chiana is equally determined to help him.

This is an enjoyable blend of mystery and historical fiction, with just enough romance to satisfy those who yearn for it but not so much that it'll turn off those who just want the mystery. Though this book has garnered some excellent reviews, my reaction is a little less enthusiastic. At times, the writing pulled me out of the story, usually because of a sudden change in tone, less than graceful phrasing, or because I had a "told, not shown" feeling. I also felt two characters who fit quite well elsewhere in the story seemed forced into the mystery aspect of it. Some parts of the mystery are more satisfying than others. On the plus side, I thought Hoffman developed situations for her characters that were involving and intriguing. I couldn't help but feel for the plight of Chiara, Angelica, and Isabella, all of whom are at the mercy of the men in their lives, as well as for the falsely-accused Silvano. And Silvano is an appealing character who is worth rooting for. Information about medieval art was smoothly integrated into the story and quite interesting. And even given that the needs of fiction sometimes overtook historical accuracy, I enjoyed immersing myself in fourteenth century life and learning things about it I never knew.

Words Are Teeth: What Happened to Cass McBride (booktalk)

What Happened to Cass McBride by Gail Giles
5Q 5P S (But I'm sure junior high school students will read and like it, too.)


"Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you." Well, that’s bull. Words are powerful things. As a character in the book says, "Words are teeth." Sometimes they hurt even more than a physical blow. Most of us have said something unkind about someone and thought they'd never find out. Sometimes we've said whatever it was just to be funny. Sometimes we've said it just to be nasty. Sometimes we know we're being unkind and we don't care. Sometimes we say something thoughtlessly, not really thinking about what we're saying at all. Does it matter what we say, if they're never going to know we said it? But what if they do find out? And what if we say these things directly to the person, knowing, even hoping, it will hurt them? What happens then?

When David Kirby asks Cass McBride out on a date, she can't imagine what in the world he was thinking. David is a loser with a capital L. No, David is a LOSER - full caps required. David isn't a wanna-be. He's a never-gonna-be. Why would this total nonentity think he was on her radar, let alone in her dating sphere? Cass is running for Homecoming Queen and needs every vote she can get, so she doesn't give him the withering turndown he deserves. She smiles winningly and tells him that she's kind of tied up right now. But then she sits down at her desk and writes a scathing note about it to her best friend, Emily, who will be sitting in the same desk in the next period. She doesn't realize that David must have been watching her all through class. She doesn't realize he must have seen her write the note and put it under her chair. When she does realize it, it's too late: at the end of class, instead of leaving, David heads for her desk and reads the note before she can stop him.

That night, David takes a rope and hangs himself from a tree in front of his house.

The day after his funeral, when Cass wakes up, she's not in her warm, comfortable bed. She's buried who knows how far underground in a narrow wooden crate with a walkie-talkie strapped to her hand. Kyle Kirby, David's brother, intends to make Cass pay for her thoughtless, nasty words.


(Teens who like Torey Hayden, A Child Called It, Chris Crutcher, Nancy Werlin's Rules of Survival, Elaine Alphin's Counterfeit Son and similar titles will probably like this one. Gail Giles's fans will also want to check out her web site.)

I Hear Dead People

Dead Connection by Charlie Price
4Q 4P J/S

(This review is carried over from a blog I had on Live Journal. Over the next few weeks I'll be copying those reviews over here, interspersing them with new reviews.)

I really liked the way this story is structured. It follows several characters, most notably Murray, a psychic who has conversations with dead people in the cemetery, Gates, a sheriff investigating the disappearance of a local high school girl, and Vern Billup, the alcoholic Public Affairs Officer in the local police station. Some readers may find it hard or frustrating to follow the storyline, since each (short) chapter alternates the point of view. We start out following Murray, then move on to various other characters, coming back to each several times. This really worked for me as a technique, particularly because the mystery and investigation aspects of the story lend themselves to following various leads to may or may not pan out. It also helps build the suspense, since some of the characters are considerably less stable than others. I do have a quibble with the ending, which relies on a revelation that comes pretty much out of nowhere. But I liked the book anyhow. Murray's a loner. His mother is a prostitute (even if she probably wouldn't describe herself that way). He's a poor student. He has no friends, unless you count Dearly Beloved, Edwin, and Blessed Daughter, his favorite dead people at the cemetery. He has long, satisfying conversations with them. But of course, he can't tell anyone that's what's going on, because everyone will think he's crazy and ship him off to some psych hospital. That's what he thinks when Pearl Janocheck, the cemetery caretaker's daughter comes up to him in the cemetery to ask what he's doing. He blows her off, which ticks her off and makes her vow to get revenge. Her revenge is sweet but short-lasting, since her father quickly realizes Pearl has set Murray up for a crime he didn't commit. That's an unusual way for a friendship to develop, but it happens anyhow. While Murray and Pearl are slowly developing a relationship, Murray is being watched by Billup. Billup can't stand the kid, because of an incident between Billup and Murray's mother a while back. Billup just knows the kid in the cemetery is up to no good, and he's gonna get the kid if it's the last thing he does. But first he has to deal with his alcohol problem and the blackouts that are happening almost daily now. If he could only remember what happened the night before... Meanwhile, Gates is pursuing any scrap of a lead he can dig up on what happened to Nikki, the high school cheerleader who disappeared in October. One of those leads is Robert Barry Compton, a schizophrenic former crackhead who knows he saw something, but can't remember just what it was. All of these threads begin to come together the day that Murray hears a new voice in the cemetery. It's a girl's voice, and she's saying something like "Find me."

Maggots and Dead Bodies - Please, sir, can I have some more?

The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson
3Q 4P J/S

Grrrr. Argggh.* This is the book I've been holding on to longest, so I'm afraid I've forgotten a lot of what I was going to say about it. So I'm going to say that middle school kids can handle this one if they can handle the CSI series. But fair warning: Ferguson does not shy away from the details of an autopsy or a seriously decayed dead body.
_______________________________________________

Seventeen-year-old Cameryn Mahoney has known for years that she wants to become a forensic scientist. She's done her research, too. Her father is the county coroner, and she's read all the books he has on the subject, and as many others as she can get her hands on. She's been waiting for just the right moment to ask her father if she can act as his assistant. This morning, the morning he gets the call about the floater found in a bathtub at the local hotel, is her chance. Her grandmother (Mammaw) is flat against it, but surprisingly, her father agrees. Cameryn is thrilled.

A floater is not a good way to get introduced to the job of county coroner, and that's especially true when the body isn't found for a few days. Even though Cameryn knows in her head what she's getting into, the reality is a little different. She's embarrassed and humiliated when she's caught vomiting by the sheriff's new deputy. To make it worse, her father hates the man and won't tell her why. And to make it even worse, the deputy is actually kind of...cute. But Cameryn has a job to do, so she gets her mind off the vomit and the deputy and does it, to the admiration of her father and the great annoyance of the medical examiner, who thinks a teenage girl has no business at an autopsy and certainly has no business stating her opinions during it. No, right from the start, Cameryn learns the job isn't going to be an easy one. It's about to get even harder. The next death she has to deal with is not only a murder, it's the murder of a friend.

Cameryn's best friend, Lyric, is really into psychics and psychic phenomena, but Cameryn thinks it's all a crock. She humors Lyric, but honestly, why do people fall for charlatans who claim they can see into the future or get messages from beyond the grave? So when Lyric and Adam, a boy from their class, start babbling on about the live TV show Shadow of Death and Jewel, the psychic who claims he talks to the dead, she rolls her eyes, especially when Adam claims that the scene that Jewel described in last night's show reminded him of their own small town of Silverton. Get real, she says, there hasn't been a murder in Silverton since the Gold Rush days. Only minutes later, she gets a phone call from her father summoning her to the scene of a crime. She can hardly believe it when she realizes that the body is Rachel's. And yes, the scene is very similar to the way Jewel apparently described it. But Cameryn believes in science, not psychics.

Things get even creepier when the evidence begins to indicate that Rachel was probably the latest victim of the Christopher Killer, a serial murderer who has killed several young girls around the country, leaving a Saint Christopher medal on their bodies.

Who could possibly have killed Rachel, and why? Was it the Christopher Killer? Why would he come to a tiny town like Silverton? Why would he target someone like Rachel? It doesn't seem very likely. In fact, it seems far more likely that Rachel's killer was someone who knew her. Maybe somebody who had a crush on her. Maybe somebody like...

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This is an interesting book. One of the things I appreciate about it is that it doesn't pull punches when it comes to describing the realities of murder and dead bodies. Most mysteries for teens either shy away from murder entirely or make it pretty antiseptic. Yes, there's a dead body, and yes, there's some blood. But it isn't, like, icky or anything. Yeah, right. Alane Ferguson doesn't insult the intelligence or the stomachs of her audience. Which means if you don't like maggots, blood, and graphic descriptions of what happens after death, you'll either want to skip reading this book or cover your eyes for a paragraph or two here and there.

Another point in this book's favor is that she's created some interesting dynamics between her characters and planted the seeds of some situations that have promise down the road. (Yes, this is the first book of a series. Book two is already out, though I haven't ordered it for the library - yet.) Right from the beginning, we learn that Cam's mother abandoned her long ago, but we don't know why. Neither does Cam. Cam just knows that whenever she wants to do something her grandmother doesn't approve of, it gets blamed on her mother's genes. That's a lot for a girl to deal with right there. Cam's father walks a tightrope between his daughter's wishes to immerse herself in forensic science and his mother's anger that he'd even consider it, when she should be concerned with learning to cook and finding a nice job for a young lady. The tension between Cameryn and her grandmother is very believable (though Mammaw maybe leans just a wee bit towards caricature, at least in this book). Cameryn also has to deal with being attracted to someone her father clearly hates and wants her to have nothing to do with. Cameryn isn't quite sure if she likes the deputy as a person or as a guy, but she does know she doesn't understand why her father thinks he's such a bad guy. She finally discovers the truth, but it doesn't exactly clear the path to her father being perfectly fine with her developing a friendship with him. Another interesting angle to follow up in the future.

Could I see the solution to the mystery from pretty far away? Yeah, I could. I'm not sure there are enough surprises in this book. That's what keeps me from giving this book a higher grade in the quality department. But I think there's room to build here. In future books, more attention can be paid to the mystery and a few more serious red herrings, now that the character development and basic premise have been well begun. I'm very glad to have this book to recommend to teens who want to read a good mystery.



*Extra credit if you get the reference. :)

WORDS ARE TEETH

What Happened to Cass McBride? by Gail Giles
5Q 5P S (language, violence)

"Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you." Bull. You know it and I know it. Words are powerful things. As a character in the book says, "Words are teeth". We all know that sometimes words hurt even more than a physical blow. Most of us have said things about someone and thought they'd never find out. Sometimes we've said whatever it was just to be funny. Sometimes we've said it just to be nasty. Sometimes we know we're being unkind and we don't care. And sometimes we say something thoughtlessly, not really thinking about what we're saying at all. Does it matter what we say, if they're never going to know we said it? But what if they do find out?

When David Kirby asks Cass McBride out on a date, she can't imagine what in the world he was thinking. David is a loser with a capital L. No, David is a LOSER - full caps required. David isn't a wanna-be. He's a never-gonna-be. Why would this total nonentity think he was on her radar, let alone in her dating sphere? Cass is running for Homecoming Queen, so she doesn't give him the withering turndown he deserves. She smiles winningly and tells him that she's kind of tied up right now. But then she sits down at her desk and writes a scathing note about it to her best friend, Emily, who will be sitting in the same desk in the next period. She doesn't realize that David must have been watching her all through class. She doesn't realize he must have seen her write the note and put it under her chair. When she does realize it, it's too late: at the end of class, instead of leaving, David heads for her desk and reads the note before she can stop him.

That night, David takes a rope and hangs himself from a tree in front of his house.

The day after his funeral, when Cass wakes up, she's not in her warm, comfortable bed. She's buried who knows how far underground in a narrow wooden crate with a walkie-talkie strapped to her hand. Kyle Kirby, David's brother, intends to make Cass pay for her thoughtless, nasty words.

If you like reading books that stick a fist in your solar plexus and just keep pushing, if you like books that make you sweat, if you like books that put you in a place you never, ever want to be in -- this is your book. It's harsh. It pulls no punches. You will not like these people. But by the end, you will sympathize with them, at least a little bit.

It's a bit of a trademark with Gail Giles that the endings of her books leave a question in your mind. This one is no exception. I'm looking forward to comparing notes with other readers to see what they think is going on.

This isn't a book for everyone. The situation, the language, the violence all mark it as a book for older readers who like reading dark things. But for those readers, whew! This is another winner. You can read Gail Giles's Brain Droppings and blog or check out more of her books on her official web site.

What if it wasn't a coyote?

Desert Crossing by Elise Broach
4Q 4P, J S

Okay, I admit I have a little issue with this book. But I talked to a few people about my issue, and they don't agree, so it'll be interesting to see if I'm in a vast minority! Still, I liked it overall, so I'm giving it a thumbs up.

Lucy Martinez is on a road trip from Kansas to Phoenix with her older brother Jamie and his friend Kit. She is not enjoying it. For one thing, it's a long trip, and she's been stuck in the back seat the entire way. For another, Kit is a total jerk (also a total babe, but the jerk thing pretty much cancels that out). For a third, they're driving through a long, desolate section of New Mexico desert. It's way too hot and way too boring. So she's already not in a very good mood when Kit pulls out the beer that the guys bought to drink in their hotel room. What if a cop sees them and pulls them over? They're underage. Kit scoffs at that. What cop is going to be out here in the desert? Before the argument can get much further, a sudden thunderstorm whips up. It's inky black, and the rain is pouring down. They can barely see a foot in front of them. And then they feel it. The bump. The big, hollow kind of thunk that means you've hit something.

The boys are all for assuming that all they hit was a coyote. They want to keep going. But Lucy isn't so sure. She can see a patch of yellow light in the distance: a house. What if they hit someone's dog? Much to Jamie's annoyance and Kit's disgust, she insists that they go back to check.

It wasn't a dog. It wasn't a coyote. It was a girl. And she's dead.

There's nothing for it. They can't leave her there and pretend that nothing happened. Kit and Lucy head for the patch of light, knowing it means a house and someone who can call for help and the police. Enter Beth Osway, an artist in her thirties. Enter major complications.

Three underage kids in a car that reeks of beer. One dead girl with no identification at the side of the road. Jamie, the driver, is in serious trouble. The police take him to jail, and Kit and Lucy stay with Beth while things get taken care of. Over the next couple of days, Lucy's life is rocked with bombshell after bombshell. The police are deciding what to charge Jamie with. Kit is making moves on her, and she doesn't know how she feels about that. Jamie is making moves on Beth, who doesn't mind at all - but Lucy does. And there's something that doesn't quite add up about the dead girl. Where did she come from? Where was she going? What was she doing out in the middle of the desert with no backpack or anything? The only clue is something that the police don't know that Lucy has: a tiny charm she found near the victim's body. Lucy becomes convinced that there's more to the story, and she's determined to clear Jamie's name. She convinces a very unwilling Kit to help her figure out who the girl was and how she got into the desert. This is a trail that leads them straight towards danger...and straight towards some sort of strange romantic interlude, too.

There's no doubt about it, this is a book with a good hook. You're going to want to keep reading. I did, anyhow. The relationships in this book are what made it most interesting to me, not so much the mystery. Beth is an interesting character who clearly has moments in her past she'd prefer to forget. She's clearly not a people-person, so I was surprised by how she evolves. The art storyline really worked for me in helping to define characters, though I thought Beth's critique of Lucy's art work was too obviously a harbinger of things to come. Lucy drives the story, though, and she's worth spending time with. But I'm still having trouble buying the Lucy-Kit thing, even though there's no denying that the hot factor can overwhelm even the most sensible of people. It just doesn't seem consistent with Lucy's character. On the other hand, traumatic events can make people do things that are out of character, so there you go. And again, there is that hot factor!

The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty

The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty
3Q 3P

I'm so sorry to write what I'm about to write. I loved Jaclyn Moriarty's Feeling Sorry for Celia and liked her Year of Secret Assignments. I was so looking forward to reading this one. And now I have a terribly letdown feeling, because frankly, it was just not fun to read. At almost 500 pages, it was a long slog, even though it's written in journal format, which usually means a book reads more quickly.

Bindy Mackenzie is an extraordinarily intelligent girl in what would be her junior year in high school if she lived in the U.S. instead of Australia. She is also one of the least liked girls in her school, although she tries to be helpful and friendly to everyone. The trouble is, Bindy's people skills aren't as well developed as her study skills, so her fellow students don't see her as being friendly and helpful. They see her as being condescending, overbearing, too smart for her own good, and at least a little strange. And you know what? She is. As I read this story, even hearing it from Bindy's point of view, I agreed with her classmates. If I'm going to read 500 pages of a novel, I want to like the person I'm reading about. And I didn't. Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't hate her. I just found her irritating and remarkably clueless about herself and her family. We often hear that journaling helps people find clarity and understand themselves better. But Bindy occasionally writes things in her journal (particularly in a section she calls her life story) that are pretty revealing if you have the least bit of ability to read between the lines. Apparently, as good a student as she is, this is not one of her skills, because things that raise flags for the reader (which include six fellow students in her FAD - Friendship and Development - group, not just the person reading the book) don't trigger any sort of reaction in her at all. She truly is clueless about herself and her family, and frankly, that was as annoying as it was (to me) unlikely. She's too smart not to pick up on such obvious clues.

Bindy has always been a top student - until this year. This year, things have changed. Not only has she moved in with her aunt and uncle, but her grades are plummeting and she often feels tired and sick. She refuses to see the doctor. Among other reasons, she's afraid he'll tell her she has glandular fever [aka mononucleosis], and only teenagers get that. Bindy believes she isn't a teenager. Bindy's school is trying a new class this year for Year Eleven students. It's called Friendship and Development, and it's supposed to be a support group for students, since Year Eleven is such a difficult year (like junior year here!). Bindy thinks the group is a total waste of time (and writes to the education authorities to say so - three times). Included in her FAD group are Elizabeth (from Feeling Sorry for Celia and Emily (from Year of Secret Assignments, Toby, who she used to be friendly with in elementary school, Astrid (who Bindy has an unpleasant history with), and Finnegan, a new student and her assigned buddy. (On page 430, I was still waiting for her to admit that she has a crush on Finnegan and to find out if the feeling was mutual.) On the first day of FAD, the class is asked to write a sentence about each person in the class. Bindy is crushed and angry to see what they write about her, and she doesn't handle it well. Her methods of retaliation backfire on her big time, and she eventually realizes she needs to apologize. She also realizes she hasn't done some assignments for her FAD teacher. To make up the work, she writes her life story for her FAD teacher. It is this assignment that her fellow FAD students later find, read, and decide is evidence that someone is trying to murder Bindy. (The evidence: she's tired, she can't concentrate, those plummeting grades, a strange mania for the word Cincinnati). After all, they reason, a lot of people have reason to want her out of their lives, including 1) the student she ratted out for drug use, 2) the students who can no longer use the school's intranet to share files because Bindy ratted them out, 3) the teachers she overheard having an argument that turns physical, 4) the principal, because he's tired of all the messages she sends him, or 5) her aunt and uncle, who need her room for the new baby. Is Bindy's life really in danger? Is she really being poisoned? It could be.

But this book isn't really a mystery, let alone a murder mystery. In Australia, where it was first published, the book is titled Becoming Bindy, and that really is what the book is about. Bindy understands so little about herself at the beginning of the school year, and she learns so much about herself (and other people!) by the end of it. She has become a new person.

Does this book have the same trademark humor that marked Moriarty's previous two books? I didn't think so. But reviews on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com disagree with me. They found a lot more humor in it than I did (I did find some, though!). Overall, they like it more than I did. I'm really interested to hear what other people thought about this book, especially teens. In the meantime, I want to go back and read the other two books again, and I will still wait impatiently for the next Jaclyn Moriarty book!