Abduction! by Peg Kehret

So this is definitely not a book I would normally have read. I read it for work and it's the last of the must reads for work for a little while. I had to read this as part of my job as a teen librarian but I definitely think it skews younger.

Matt lives with his mom and his sister Bonnie. Bonnie meets him everyday right after school and they take the bus home together. Until one day Matt isn't there. The tale that follows is sad and scary but packed with a lot of important information.

None of the charaters is very deep in this book. Everyone is there to tell their part of the story. The story is an important one. It's important to see how Matt was tricked and how many people saw something and didn't really realize what was going on. There is also a good description of the Amber Alert process and what goes into looking for a missing child.

This book is most definitely a cautionary tale for younger kids. There is a lot of good information here and I think that it's a good reminder to adults that children can't always take care of themselves and that even the strongest precautions sometimes aren't enough. It's also a good reminder to children to always be aware of what's going on, to ask for help and to never go with strangers

Secret Society by Tom Dolby

I hate it when you spend all this time working on a review and then the internet decides it hates you and you lose everything. (Although I am going to keep telling myself that this review is better then my original.)

The Society follows four students from Chadwick Prep, Pheobe, Lauren, Nick and Patch. Phoebe, Laren and Nick are all invited to join the Society, a secret society in New York City that only the fifteen elite are invited to each year. At first the Society seems innocent enough but as time passes things become more and more sinister.

The book opens with a death and then moves back to the beginning of the teens initiation in the society. I was dying to know who had died and I have to tell you, it was not at all who I expected. The pace of the book moves quickly as narration jumps back and forth between each of the four teens. Each of the characters has their own distinct voice even when they sometimes share the same feelings as Lauren and Phoebe sometimes seem to.

My only complaint about the book is that we never really find out much about the Society itself. We just get a few generalities but nothing concrete. I wanted to know more about how the Society worked, especially since it was implied that this beginning was supposed to be the easy part where the initiates were supposed to simply be reaping benefits before the real work began. It sounds like there are even more sinister things going on and this beginning part was fairly sinister. There were also some unanswered questions regarding Patch and his family that are bugging me a little bit. I have heard that the author is writing a sequel and I am hoping that these questions will be answered there.

(Since I wrote this I found out that the sequel came out this month and it's called the Trust. In an effort to keep my checking things out of the library under control I am not requesting it until I return the two library books that I have out.)