reviews by Jaye: My Sister's Stalker by Nancy Springer

I convinced my friend Jaye to write some reviews for me. And here is her second review. Enjoy.

pub date: February 20, 2012
publisher: Holiday House
pages: 128

Jaye's Thoughts:
This book is almost a novella, and that may be part of the reason for its being so different than many teen books around today. It comes in at a whopping 93 pages, and pretty much every one of them moves.

Synopsis: Rig discovers a stalker-ish website about his sister, who is away at school and gets worried. From there, it diverges from typical teen books, in that the first person he thinks to go to is his dad. In my experience, parents—most any adult, really, is the last person teens go to for help, and parents are generally largely absent. But hold on, it gets better—his dad believes him, and they start working together. Even his absentminded, sweetly naïve mom gets involved. And drives him crazy. I liked that.



I like how Rig’s character was drawn. 93 pages isn’t much time to flesh out the characters, but with thrillers, that’s not usually a high priority. Still, I found Rig a sympathetic hero, someone to root for. He went through a bit of self-discovery, too, which was interesting, though I would have liked more development and exploration with it. One aspect of this self-discovery was revealed at the very end, and it didn’t seem to fit. Came straight out of left field, and left me wondering, “Huh?” Other than that, a fun, short read. One for an afternoon. At least an hour of one, anyway.

summary:
When 15-year-old Rig, a loner, discovers that his popular older sister is being stalked while away at college, he sets out to save her, with unexpected help from his divorced parents.