Don't Look Now

December 1, 2013

Gr 8 Up-Having escaped the clutches of Project Persephone at the conclusion of Don't Turn Around (HarperCollins, 2012), teen hacker Noa finds herself on the run. Along with fellow runaway Zeke, she takes down Persephone labs across the country and rescues as many kids as possible from experimentation and death. Back home in Boston, Peter runs the information side of things, providing data, blueprints, and technical support for their raids, all while dealing with some harsh difficulties of his own. They save a few kids at a time, but they are still just a small group of untrained teenagers against a ruthless corporate army that will stop at nothing to recapture Noa and finish her pathetic resistance. This second book in a trilogy introduces new characters and new threats to Noa and Peter and leads them headlong into a conclusion that should be eagerly anticipated. Don't Look Now is not as tech-heavy as the first book, mostly because Gagnon has taken those duties away from Noa and turned her more into a Katniss-type leader and symbol, leaving Peter to do the heavy lifting in the computer department. The action is a little more balanced this time around, spread throughout the book, and there are some serious issues along the way for all involved. Gagnon handles these developments and revelations well and they hit readers with the same force as they hit the characters. A few savvy teens will find the twists and turns to be fairly obvious, but they by no means detract from the fun of getting there.-Erik Knapp, Davis Library, Plano, TX

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2013
Hackers Noa and Peter step up their undercover battles against pharmaceutical giant Pike & Dolan as danger escalates for them both (Don't Turn Around, 2012). Pike & Dolan continue Project Persephone, their secret and deadly research ostensibly to end the PEMA epidemic striking teens across the country, despite having one of their labs exposed to the authorities by the teens. Peter has stayed with his parents in Boston even after discovering their involvement with P&D, while Noa has joined the Southwest-based Persefone's Army, made up of freed subjects of P&D's labs working to liberate others before they're killed. Peter helps Noa via a secret chat group online while worrying that his ex-girlfriend Amanda might have contracted the always-fatal PEMA. Noa deals with internal problems within the army as she plans their next mission. In an attempt to find the new servers for P&D's main computers, Peter increases his surveillance of Mason, a ruthless P&D agent, only to be drawn into Mason's plotting; meanwhile, Noa grows suspicious of new recruits to her cause. Gagnon's second in the Don't Turn Around trilogy inches the tale forward with a few thrills concentrated at the volume's close, but she spends far too much time examining from every side the various love triangles and quadrangles among its characters. Here's hoping the finale will be a return to the thrills and surprises of the first installment and not more love among the hackers. Worth it to get fans from here to there; not of much interest as a stand-alone. (Thriller. 12-16)

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October 15, 2013
Grades 9-12 Don't Turn Around (2012) introduced the unpleasant notion of a pharmaceutical company stealing homeless kids and experimenting on them to create a wonder drug. This sequel contains every bit of the same whiz-bang, splitting our heroes down two parallel plots. Though Noa is experiencing strange physical changes since her operation, she nonetheless has become the leader of Persefone's Army, a group of teen revolutionaries who stage raids on the corporation's secret labs in the Southwestalthough the latest raid might have led to a traitor in their midst. Meanwhile, Peter's still in Boston, hacking hither and yon to figure out the secret to the deadly PEMA virus. Noa and Peter, who seemed to be heading toward romance in the first book, find themselves lusting for companions closer at hand, and these relationships become, shall we say, complicated. Hacking is usually death to prose, but Gagnon pulls it off smashingly, accelerating the crosscutting to a delirious pace by book's end. Don't chew those fingernails too hardyou'll need them to turn the pages of the next volume.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)