Reality Check

Adult mystery writer Abrahams first made the jump to young adult mysteries with the bestselling Echo Falls series. In this book narrator Jim Colby evokes all the emotions of 16-year-old Cody, whose rich girlfriend gets herself sent across the country to boarding school in Vermont, partly to get her away from him. Once there, she abruptly disappears. Cody, whose plan to get a football scholarship is sidelined by injury, heads east to find her. Listeners will eat up the action that follows, and Colby's convincing performance as a sleuth more dogged than dynamic will have them rooting for this brave kid and the girl he loves. D.G. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

May 25, 2009
In the latest engrossing crime novel from Abrahams (Nerve Damage
), Colorado football star Cody Laredo's junior year has gotten off to a dreadful start. After his girlfriend, Clea, is sent to a boarding school across the country (triggering a fight and a breakup), he tears his ACL during a football game and quickly spirals into a depression that leads to him dropping out of school. When he learns that Clea has gone missing, he decides to travel across the country to investigate. When he gets to Vermont, Cody meets Clea's new boyfriend, encounters a friendly cop and has run-ins with locals from the town and rich kids from the boarding school. Although clues often come too easily and coincidentally to Cody—Abrahams pushes hard to explain away the flaws surrounding the pivotal piece of evidence—and the “whodunit” is hardly surprising, Abrahams tells an exciting, fast-paced story. Cody and most of the teens he encounters—both out west and in Vermont—are complex characters with believable motivations and faults, plot issues aside. Ages 12–up.