The Truth Lies Here

June 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-Penny is returning for her yearly visit to Bone Lake, MI, to see her father. She's also hoping to get a good start on her admission essay for college by creating a journalistic piece about the town and why the plastics factory died there. But something is not quite right about this sleepy community when weird things start happening. A football player and his girlfriend have disappeared and so does Penny's father. She and her friends spot a charred deer at a local barn party. Soon after, men in black suits are strolling around Main Street. Penny realizes something is afoot when chunks of her memory go missing. Klingele has done a marvelous job here with some beloved science fiction tropes (government conspiracies, Bigfoot, and meteorite crashes), offering a believable story for teens who love coming-of-age stories in the vein of Stranger Things or science fiction shows like The Twilight Zone or The X-Files. VERDICT This one has great appeal for most teens who enjoy classic science fiction and a good mystery.-William Anderson, Scott County Public Library, IN

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2018
While trying to find her missing father, Penny uncovers a conspiracy in the Upper Peninsula.Penny's father lost her trust when she discovered that he fabricated the cryptozoology stories for his tabloid magazine column. Years later, she returns to small-town Michigan from Chicago, where she has lived with her mother since her parents' divorce, for a summer visit with him, planning on mining the town for an article about its decline due to the recession, which shuttered the local plant that was the area's employer. When her father doesn't show up to meet her at the airport, she thinks he's chasing a story--but the geeky boy next door, her one-time best friend, half-Chippewa Dex, who is now her father's protégé, thinks it's something sinister. After Penny's investigations into local economic woes turn up an oddity (the word-for-word identical response that it's "best not to think too much about it" from anyone asked about an accident at the plant), mysterious federal agent types show up around town, and bodies similar to the mysterious one that prompted Penny's father's latest story start to pile up. Penny becomes determined to get to the bottom of everything, and her well-plotted, conspiracy-laden journey leads her to revelations about perspective and her relationships with various loved ones. Aside from Dex and his mother, all characters are white.A surprisingly heartfelt coming-of-age story wrapped in a zany package. (Science-fiction thriller. 13-adult)

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May 1, 2018
Grades 9-12 Penny's gearing up for another awkward summer in Bone Lake, Michigan, with her unreliable dad, who writes a paranormal sightings column for a tabloid and, more important, forgot to pick her up at the airport. She's hoping to write a college-admissions-worthy article on down-on-its-luck Bone Lake in the wake of its factory closing, but everyone she asks about it is weirdly evasive, and the spate of recent disappearances is making her even more worried about her dad. Klingele's spooky, sci-fi-tinged mystery reads like a YA X-Files in the best possible way. Hyperlogical Penny meets her match in her neighbor Dex, whose harebrained notions about aliens and conspiracies are too loopy to take seriously?but the truth, naturally, is somewhere in between. Penny's investigation into the strange goings-on is nicely paralleled by her search for answers about her parents' divorce and her gradual realization that not everything makes sense in black-and-white. A touch of romance and meaningful self-discovery interspersed among the suspenseful scenes of mysterious creatures, pitch-black forests, and an eerie abandoned factory will broaden the appeal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)