17 & Gone

Gr 8 Up—When 17-year-old Lauren glimpses a "MISSING" poster for Abigail Sinclair on a telephone pole, she runs through traffic to remove it. Mesmerized, she reads it as she returns to her van, and when she looks in the rearview mirror, she sees Abby looking back, disheveled, dirty, and wearing her "last seen wearing" outfit. In the coming days and weeks, Abby is joined by other missing girls, all the same age, who disappeared and whose families have stopped looking for them. Lauren becomes obsessed with the missing, but mostly with Abby, whom she believes is the only one she can actually save. But as she delves further into the lives of these girls, she becomes more and more detached from her own reality. Suma's novel subtly explores one teen's descent into schizophrenia. Lauren's first visions of the missing teens are realistic, though paranormal, but as the story progresses, readers begin to wonder about the authenticity of the hallucinations. Lauren is the pivotal character and the only one truly and fully developed, but rather than weakening the story this enables readers to live exclusively in her version of events. Mature without being graphic, with a complex and intriguing plot, this novel should have no trouble finding readers.—Heather E. Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, AL