Need by Joelle Charbonneau

High school teenagers begin getting invitations to join a social network site.  They have to, in turn, invite five other friends to join.  When they do, the site - NEED - will fulfill a request, seemingly free of charge ("What do you NEED?").  Of course, nothing is ever really free, and soon NEED members are being asked to perform small tasks in exchange for something they request.  But when the tasks get more dangerous and begin to have real consequences, the teens must begin to question their ethics and sense of right and wrong.  Are those concert tickets really worth it?  How far would you be willing to go?

I liked the premise of this book.  In today's social media age, it's not so far-fetched to imagine a scenario like this in real life.  What ultimately turned me off from this book was the explanation at the end of who/what was behind NEED.  I won't spoil it here, but I didn't buy it.  If this book was more dystopian/science fiction, then maybe.  But this is firmly realistic mystery fiction and I didn't believe the "big reveal."  Too bad, because this one had potential.

Jackaby by William Ritter

I feel the need to state off the bat that I came into this book highly biased.  Jackaby has been touted by booksellers as "A cross between Sherlock and Doctor Who."  Now, anyone who's met me knows that I'm a freak for these shows.  My office is filled with Doctor Who things.  I have a sonic screwdriver.  (A student once asked me, "What is that?  A lightsaber?")  I have this cover from Entertainment Weekly up on my office wall.  I wore this t-shirt to school on Halloween. 
So, a book that's called a mash up of these two shows?  Um, yeah.  I'm all over it.

Jackaby is a paranormal mystery set in New England, 1892.  Abigail Rook arrives in town with no money, no job, and no husband, but with a healthy sense of adventure.  She answers an ad for "Investigated Services: Assistant Wanted."  The man who placed the ad is R.F. Jackaby, a private investigator who happens to be able to see spirits and inhuman creatures, and also wears a long, expensive coat and scarf.  Soon The Doctor and Clara Sherlock and Watson Jackaby and Abigail are investigating a string of grisly murders. 

For all the hype surrounding this book, I ultimately found Jackaby to be... fine.  I brought it home over Christmas break, and it sat on my coffee table for close to 2 weeks before I forced myself to finish it.  The "who done it" part of the mystery was not so hard to guess, although the paranormal aspect of it came out of slightly-left field.  Jackaby himself is certainly very Sherlock-ish.  He's an odd duck with a keen sense of observation that endears him few friends.  Abigail is given little to do other than to follow Jackaby around, although she has some skill at paying attention to details that eventually earns Jackaby's trust.

This book would be fine for middle school or high school, and at only 300 pages, is relatively short compared to many books coming out these days.  There's a good bit of odd humor (Jackaby's former assistant has been magically turned into a duck, for instance, thanks to a spell gone wrong), but I just wish it was more suspenseful.

Vanishing Girls, by Lauren Oliver

Review given in exchange for a digital review copy from Edelweiss.

Vanishing Girl, the newest (to be released March 2015) from Lauren Oliver, switches POV between two sisters, Nick and Dara.  Both are close in age and look similar to each other, but their actions are far different.  Nick, the older sister, is more responsible, follows the rules, and looks out for Dara.  The younger sister, on the other hand, is sneaky, impulsive, and hiding secrets.  But perhaps, so is Nick?

The book revolves around a car crash: Nick was driving, Dara was badly hurt.  What happened, exactly, isn't revealed until the end.  Nick can't remember and Dara doesn't want to think about it.  The timeline jumps around ("Before" and "After") and also switches between both girls, which can sometimes make the plot fuzzy and hard to follow.  Of course, by the end of the book I realized this was probably Oliver's intention.

This is a story about sisters: how they love each other and resent each other all at the same time.  They're always competing, even if they don't realize it.  When Dara goes missing on her birthday, Nick begins a frantic chase to figure out where Dara disappeared to, leading to a surprising reveal.

After finishing this book, I thought, "Dang it.  Now I have to go back and read it again to see how I missed those clues."  I liked this one much better than Oliver's previous novel, Panic (see earlier blog post), although I think comparisons will be made to E. Lockhart's We Were Liars, which is similar.

Blackbird, by Anna Carey

I'd heard some positive advance praise for Blackbird, so I was eager to get my hands on this one.  Students are always asking me for mystery book recommendations, so I was hoping this one would turn out to be a good selection. 

The book begins with a girl lying on the tracks of the subway.  She gets to safety in the mere nick of time.  When the police want to question her about what she was doing there, she flees. 

The girl doesn't know her name, how she got on the tracks, or where she's supposed to go.  She has a mysterious tattoo on her wrist, and a backpack filled with cash and a few supplies. 

Carey chooses to write the book in 2nd person point of view, which puts the reader in the girl's confused state: "Why were you just lying on the subway tracks?  Why can't you remember how you were ended up there, how you got to that station, this city?"
We learn discover pieces of the mystery in real time, right along with her.

This book started a little slowly for me.  It reminded me of the book The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die, by April Henry.  It too opens with a girl who cannot remember who she is or where she is.
Blackbird is not particularly lengthy - about 250 pages - but it seemed to take too long to begin answering questions.  However, once it finally got going, the premise was intriguing.  Carey borrows from the famous short story "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell as inspiration for the plot here.

Readers should know that the novel ends rather abruptly and on a cliffhanger, obviously setting us up for a sequel.