Bullet Point

Starred review from May 1, 2010
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Its common enough to call a book a page-turner, but heres one that shouldve been printed on a scrollthose pesky page turns take far too much time. With an engulfing plot, multifaceted characters, and a plausibility rare to the genre, Abrahams latest beats you senseless and leaves you for dead. Great, huh? When a budget crunch squeezes out his schools baseball program, 16-year-old Wyatt moves across the state to take advantage of another schools team. Its there that he meets Greera few years older, beautiful, and equipped with wildly fluctuating mood swings. The frequent arguments between the two are the books heart, skipping fluently and believably between impatience, attraction, desperation, and hope. Like almost all characters in the book, Greers good/bad status is perpetually in doubt, especially when her incarcerated dad helps arrange a meeting between Wyatt and his biological father, who also resides in the local prison. When Wyatt begins to suspect his fathers innocence, he gets curiousand in trouble. Edgier and sexier than most YA novels dare, Abrahams thriller wrenches guts with a Richard Pricelike facility. Readers will be as irretrievably drawn in as Wyatt.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)