Splinter

January 16, 2017
When new evidence surfaces in the unsolved mystery of her mother’s disappearance, 16-year-old Sami Lang is determined to uncover the truth. No one has seen Delilah Lang since that afternoon 10 years earlier when she left the house and never returned. Suspicion fell on Sami’s professor father, Chris, recently divorced from her mother and well on his way to becoming an alcoholic. Sami, who has since grown close to her stepsister and stepmother, never believed that her mother died, especially after she began receiving cryptic postcards from around the country, inscribed with her mother’s two favorite numbers. Now the police have a new lead: another woman is reported missing and has disturbing ties to Sami’s family. Dawn (Oblivion) creates an engrossing thriller, blending Sami’s amateur sleuthing with believable teen angst: Sami develops feelings for her strange neighbor’s handsome visiting nephew, while contending with the unwanted media attention her mother’s case attracts. It’s not the shot at a happy ending that makes this such a compelling story, so much as Sami’s struggle to come to terms with tragedy without letting it define her. Ages 13–up. Agent: Andrea Somberg, Harvey Klinger.