Book Review: Girl, Missing by Sophie McKenzie

Girl, Missing gets into full swing immediately, no messing around with backgrounds or character development - the first page tells us all we need to know. Lauren Matthews is fourteen and knows she is adopted but becomes suddenly curious when she has to write a school essay called "Who am I?" and her parents become cagey and withold imformation. Lauren decides to try and find out where she came from herself with the help of the internet, a missing childrens website and her best friend, Jam. Lauren and Jam end up on an adventure that takes them to America where they find themselves on the run.

Although it was clearly aimed at the younger end of the YA spectrum, it still had it share of excitement and was a very pacey book with plenty of cliffhangers at the end of chapters.

I think I would be interested enough to check out McKenzie's other books The Set Up and Blood Ties look interesting.

Book Review: Stolen by Lucy Christopher

I’m struggling somewhat to write a review of this Stolen as really not much happened.

The premise is great: British girl at Bangkok airport gets kidnapped and drugged and taken to Australia by her captor where he keeps her in the middle of the baron outback with no way of escape. I wanted to like it but the truth be told I was bored throughout most of it. I didn’t feel any anxiety for Gemma’s predicament or feel her fear, I never really got a sense that the book was set in the Australian outback (I knew it was set there, but it didn’t feel real). There was not an adequate enough explanation for why her kidnapper, Ty, had taken her.

I have read other books about being in the Australian outback (Douglas Kennedy’s The Dead Heart scared the life out of me) but as far as this book goes, it’s not one I could recommend unfortunatley.