Hellworld

Gr 9 Up—This apocalyptic novel starts deep inside an Arizona cave that's so dark that "it causes dizziness and nausea." Charlie is calling for Abby, then his girlfriend, Selby. Abby answers, but Selby can only whimper in pain from the knife wound she inflicted on herself. Stunned and terrified, Charlie and Abby crawl toward each other, with only sound to guide them. From there, the narrative flips back to five years earlier, when the film crew from The Spectre Spectrum, a ghost-debunking reality TV show, disappeared. Abby's mom and Charlie's dad were among the missing. Seventeen-year-old Abby's life since then has revolved around playing the adult in the house as her father sinks further and further into depression. While beginning to get rid of reminders of her mother so that her dad might heal, Abby comes across a book, Myth of Gods, which had belonged to Charlie's dad. Someone had drawn two thick black lines, making an X over the title, and underneath, had written one word: "wrong." Abby calls Charlie, and together they plan to go back to the Arizona cave where their parents were lost. As the story alternates between the past and the present, readers will try to discover how this group of friends, introduced in the opening scenes, came to be in the cave—and what they find. The taut pacing is reminiscent of that in Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes, and teens will have to pay very close attention to every cleverly integrated detail to follow this mystery/adventure to its shocking revelation.