Dead Girl Moon

Gr 10 Up—Grace, JJ, and Mick have had difficult lives. JJ had to move in with her alcoholic aunt and dope-selling uncle when her mom died. Mick and his father, a thief, are hiding out. And Grace has been sexually abused by her brothers. They all wind up in the tiny town of Portage, Montana, where they hope to restart their shattered lives. But when the teens find the body of a young woman in the river, they become entangled in Portage's seedy underbelly. Out of fear, they flee. While on the run, Grace decides she'll make money by prostituting herself, and JJ and Mick try their hardest to stop her. They eventually drag her back to Portage in the hope that progress has been made in the girl's murder investigation. Instead Mick becomes the prime suspect, Grace is wanted for questioning, and JJ, as usual, goes unnoticed. In a series of ridiculous scenarios, Grace is kidnapped by the people covering up the girl's murder and her friends save her by cooperating with the police. The unimaginative plot ties up too neatly and jumps all over the place. The town of Portage, where runaways and drifters are bought and sold like cattle and dragged into corruption, is far-fetched and unbelievable. Even the solution to the mystery surrounding the dead girl's murderer is anticlimactic.—Lauren Newman, Northern Burlington County Regional Middle School, East Columbus, NJ