Whiteout

January 1, 2010
Gr 8-10-With a blizzard raging around her, Chass trips over something in the snow and is horrified to discover the body of her music teacher. Through the whiteout, she sees a man wearing a hood and sunglasses staring at her. After 16 years on the run from the man who killed Chass's father, her mom takes no chances and prepares to leave town. Determined to solve the mystery rather than move again, the teen begins to track down clues to what turns out to be several mysteries. In between being shot at, trapped in burning buildings, blindly groping through whiteouts, and avoiding wolf attacks, Chass pieces together the evidence and closes in on solutions while the killer is closing in on her. The plot winds through a number of turns and red herrings, and the thriller aspects are appropriately tense and briskly paced. The one disappointment is in the setting: Chass and her friends spend the majority of the day walking around town in whiteout conditions and subfreezing temperatures, but there is no palpable sense of the cold or the isolation that a whiteout should bring. This is a minor flaw in an otherwise enjoyable page-turner. While there are some gaps to Chass's personal history, Sorrells provides sufficient bullet points in this third installment in the series to familiarize new readers with the overall premise."Brandy Danner, Wilmington Memorial Library, MA"

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