The Missing Girl by Norma Fox Mazer YP FIC MAZER

Beauty, Mim, Stevie, Fancy, and Autumn live happy carefree lives, but they shouldn’t. A man is watching them. A man that looks normal and ordinary and safe, but he isn’t. He watches and he waits, but he won’t wait forever. After he stops waiting nothing will eb the same.

This book is creeeeeepy with a capital EW. Reading the thoughts of a deranged man obsessed with children isn’t exactly my idea of a Good Time, but it isn’t meant to be light hearted and fun. It is meant to be disturbing and horrifying, and it is! The alternating points of view between a happy family and their day to day life and a twisted monster are seriously compelling and repellent at the same time. It really works that Mazer addresses the reader as ‘You” when focusing on the different family members points of view, it leaves you guessing as to what will happen next. Mazer shows that you don’t have to be graphic or overly violent to be truly scary. Fair warning, you will not be able to put this book down and it will make you paranoid about strangers for at least a few days. Read it with the lights on and read it fast!

P.S. Even though this doesn’t affect my review at all it has one of the best designed covers I’ve seen in a long time.

Girl, Stolen by April Henry YP FIC HENRY

Sixteen year old Cheyenne Wilder is having a rough day. She’s feeling really sick and her mom was just running into the store to get some medicine when the car she is laying down in is stolen with her stolen along with it. Now a car thief has become a kidnapper and the stakes just became life and death. The one thing that is keeping her alive also keeps her from escaping: Cheyenne is blind. She wants to trust a captor who seems to want to help her, but trust is a deadly luxury. Cheyenne is blind, seriously ill, and running out of time in this nail biting, pulse pounding thriller.

This novel starts tense and ratchets up the suspense quick. The relationship between Cheyenne and her nicest kidnapper Griffin is a great way to keep the conflict fresh. The back and forth between the two of trust and doubt is exciting and moves the dram forward really well. The characters feel like humans that are making horrifically bad decisions driven by greed rather than inhuman villains. This actually makes the book scarier, because you can see how this could happen to anyone in bad enough circumstances. A good thriller, kept from being great by being sort or predictable and having the ending feel rushed, BUT a really fun read for people wanting something fast, fun, and interesting.

Wish You Were Dead by Todd Strasser YP FIC STRASSER

An anonymous blogger called Str-S-d wishes Lucy Cunningham, the most popular student in school was dead. The next day Lucy disappears and the small affluent town is thrown into a panic. Madison is a teen girl at the center of the mystery. Lucy was once her best friend and soon Madison receives notes warning her she is in danger. Could it be Madison’s long time cyber stalker or the new boy Tyler, that Madison can’t help being drawn to? And when more of Lucy’s friends appear on Str-S-d’s blog and then disappear will she be able to solve the mystery and save her friends?

Wish You Were Dead is a white knuckle thriller that grabs you (and poor Lucy) from the very first chapter and hooks you in until the last page. The author ends chapters with the kidnapper’s point of view. These sections are super creepy and scary without giving away who the villain is. There are plenty of great plot twists and I was kept guessing until the very end. Everything plays out like a really fun and scary horror movie, which means there are times you’ll want to yell at the characters, “What are you doing!? Don’t go in there!” But that’s what makes scary books fun. Best of all, Todd Strasser will be writing two more books in this series, so there are plenty more scares to come!

The Golden Compass / Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass is the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Although it has been around for a few years, I decided to read it now because there's been a lot of hype about the movie version that's going to be released in December, starring Nicole Kidman as the uber-glamorous but evil villian, Mrs. Coulter.

This book is a thought-provoking fantasy, set in a parallel universe populated by distracted scholars, an ultra-powerful church, gypsy-like boat-dwellers and armored polar bears. Most of the action takes place in England and the North Pole. The main character is a young girl called Lyra. This book traces her journey from England to the North Pole to rescue her friend Roger, who has been kidnapped by a mysterious, government-backed group of scientists who perform gruesome experiments on the children they steal. With the help of the strange "golden compass" of the book's title as well as the assistance of a variety of unusual and mystical folk she encounters on her journey, Lyra uncovers her destiny, which influences the course of mankind.

The trilogy continues with The Subtle Knife and concludes with The Amber Spyglass. The author also wrote a companion volume to the trilogy called Lyra's Oxford. We have all four books at the library, and the trilogy is available on audiobook as well.