When Griffin hopped into the Escalade, he thought he’d just made the steal of a lifetime. Who leaves the keys to their expensive SUV in the car while they’re in the store? But when Griffin hears the shuffling around in the back seat and sees the face of 16-year-old Cheyenne Wilder staring back at him, he realizes he’s in a heck of a lot more trouble than he could even imagine.

Until he learns that Cheyenne is blind and cannot see who has taken her and the car far away from her step mother, her father (who just happens to be a big wig at Nike), and the shopping center where her step mother was picking up the medicine Cheyenne sorely needed to combat the pneumonia plaguing her.

April Henry’s Girl, Stolen reminded me a lot of the Janie series by Caroline B. Cooney, if for no other reason than the missing girl aspect. This was a very fast paced read, with alternating perspectives in each chapter. Although this technique is jarring at first since it’s not entirely clear who is narrating at first, it becomes clearer and clearer throughout the story and ultimately becomes what makes this story work so well. We get to see how Cheyenne manages to use her other senses to figure out where she is and who her captors are and we get to see Griffin and his family come to terms with what has happened.

Griffin as a character is much more complex than I initially gave him credit for. While he struck me as the guy after an easy steal, the story unravels such that Griffin is actually a product of an unfortunate upbringing, and he feels absolutely terrible for what he’s done to Cheyenne. His father and brother, on the other hand, are content in torturing the girl; Griffin instead feels horrible and does what he can to make the worst situation easier for Cheyenne. Where his father and brother are dead set on milking the accidental abduction as a kidnapping for ransom, Griffin is instead interested in just getting Cheyenne back to her family safely so she can get the medicine she needs to feel better. He doesn’t want the blood on his hands.

Cheyenne’s perspective was just as compelling for me. As readers, we know she’s blind, and we know through the reading that she relies heavily on her other senses to gauge where she is. Where Griffin’s family thinks she’s also deaf, it’s ultimately her superior hearing skills and her memory that aids in her figuring out where she is and the names of those holding her hostage.

April Henry’s newest title will appeal to fans of fast paced, realistic reads. This is the kind of book I’d hand to fans of Caroline B. Cooney, as well as those who like stories about those with disabilities. Cheyenne’s a strong willed character with a desire to survive, and I think she’s quite an inspiring character at that. The modern setting will appeal, too, to readers who are interested in the real stories that play out like this every day. Although the last chapter of this book was quite disappointing for me, as it felt quite rushed and a little out of the blue for this title, the book itself had just enough happenstance to feel quite realistic. There’s a little bit in the way of language and situations involving violence, so it’s probably best a read for older middle school and high school students.

* Review copy picked up at the PLA conference.

Ames knows something strange is going on with her father when he becomes quieter and quieter every night and when her mother begins criticizing him more and more. When he spills that he’s lost his job, she’s disappointed, but she knows there’s something even deeper going on, and it’s not until a big blow out with her short fused and wicked mother does the truth come out.

This truth has ruined their once rich and lavish lifestyle. Ames and Chrissy can no longer go to their private school in Boulder. Then they’re going to lose their home. But where will they go? Mom doesn’t get along with her mother (who is living lavishly in a communiy for elderly residents only) and dad’s mother and father have been dead for a long time . . . or have they? The truth spills out when they are immediately yanked from Colorado to just outside Houston, Texas to a trailer park owned by dad’s parents who are in fact NOT dead. What else have Ames’s parents been hiding?

As if that wasn’t bad enough, they have one mattress to share among the four of them, and they have to do all of the rehabbing of the trailer. Ames will be the hard laborer, no doubt, but perhaps it won’t be as bad as it seems when she meets Marc, one of the boys who is helping fix up the trailer park. He seems cute, a little rough (like Ames likes), and something that her parents would utterly disapprove of. She wants it.

But she might regret that decision when the fate of her sister lies at his hands.

Dark Song is the latest release by well-known thriller/mystery writer Gail Giles. This fast-paced story begins in what seems to be the ideal setting amid wealth and power and quickly moves into the world of poverty, crime, and instability. Her signature staccato style doesn’t allow for as much character development as I’d have liked in this particular novel, but this is the kind of book that will draw in reluctant and weak readers with no problem. There is an exciting premise, and though I wanted more details and more of a realistic time frame, these are going to be the exact things that work for other readers. They want to get to the meat of the story and will have no problem with it here.

Ames is not a likable character, but compared to her mother, she is a saint. Ames’s mother is a downright wicked witch, despicable in every manner possible. And while we are immediately introduced to a likable father — the beginning pages start with a family vacation to Alaska out of the blue — we learn that dad may be an even more disgusting person than mother, but because this story is told through Ames’s perspective, we are never quite allowed to get that feeling in the same way we do with her mother. I wanted to hate her father more than I did, but Giles’s skill in developing Ames’s biases in the story did not allow me to. I think this is a good thing, too, as I would have had a different feeling about the outcome of events at the very end of the book had I hated her father more.

One thing that bothered me is the last line of the book. I won’t spill it for those who want to go in unaware, but it didn’t quite make sense to me in context of the book, though it did make me question my beliefs about Ames in the story. Because she’s not as developed as she could be, I didn’t buy her self assessment, unless it was in regards to her relationship with Marc. Even then, I needed to see more of who she became because of him, which I also didn’t get.

Dark Song is an easy sell to reluctant readers, fans of fast-paced thrillers, and both males and females. Although Ames is a female lead character, she will work for male readers. Fans of Ellen Hopkins will find a lot to enjoy with Gail Giles’s new title, as well. Although this title won’t work for hard core mystery readers, fans of lighter mysteries will enjoy the secrets embedded in this family and will find the unraveling of the truth something to relish.

*Review copy picked up at BEA.