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The story line was rather well done, but there were a lot of disconnects. The vocabulary of the 12 year old children were well above their pay grade and the use of those polysyllabic GRE words was rather pretentious. The characters were rather stereotypical for their roles, but I admit that I was curious to how it was going to end.
My biggest issue with the book is that this could not have been written by a parent. The somewhat aloofness of the author on the subject of missing children seemed to be ranked somewhere below an afterthought. The first time the protagonist runs off with her friend is one thing, but then allowing the protagonist to actually run off again and into harm's way. That seemed outside the realm of plausibility. The flippancy surrounding the other child and the protagonist's conversation with her friend's parents at the end cemented for me that no responsible parent could have written this book.
As I said, it kept my interest, and the imagery was very well done as I 'read' the audiobook and not the illustrated book. The writer is rather gifted in his use of words, but given the disjunctive nature of the subplots, I will terminate my venture into this series here. If he writes another book outside this series, I will give it an opportunity.
My biggest issue with the book is that this could not have been written by a parent. The somewhat aloofness of the author on the subject of missing children seemed to be ranked somewhere below an afterthought. The first time the protagonist runs off with her friend is one thing, but then allowing the protagonist to actually run off again and into harm's way. That seemed outside the realm of plausibility. The flippancy surrounding the other child and the protagonist's conversation with her friend's parents at the end cemented for me that no responsible parent could have written this book.
As I said, it kept my interest, and the imagery was very well done as I 'read' the audiobook and not the illustrated book. The writer is rather gifted in his use of words, but given the disjunctive nature of the subplots, I will terminate my venture into this series here. If he writes another book outside this series, I will give it an opportunity.