Friday, October 9, 2015

Young Adult Kidnapping Book List

Do you enjoy a book where the main character is kidnapped? Or have that kind of theme? Check out this book list...


1) "33 Snowfish" by Adam Rapp

 The bleak scenery of winter forms the backdrop to this tale of three runaways, bonded together to grasp feebly for emotional warmth. The reader meets Custis, Curl, and Boobie as they speed down the back roads of Illinois in a stolen car, with a stolen baby. Alternating narratives move back and forth through time, obliquely telling the characters’ individual stories even as their current drama unfolds. Custis is homeless, a fugitive from a child-porn producer; Curl is a drug-addicted prostitute; Boobie is a virtual cipher—his contributions to the narrative consist of increasingly violent and nihilistic sketches—who, the reader learns, has just killed his well-to-do parents and made off with his baby brother. They have no destination other than to get away from where they’ve been; they have a vague plan of selling the baby and using the money to set themselves up comfortably. Their “plan” is doomed from the start: the three, plus the baby, end up in an abandoned van in the middle of the woods, where first Curl dies and then Boobie vanishes into the snow. It is at this moment that Custis and the baby are taken in by Seldom, an ancient and eccentric black man who lives in a cabin and who begins to show Custis that maybe there is another way to live. With his customary ear for the language of the marginalized teen, Rapp (Little Chicago, 2002, etc.) allows his characters to present themselves with total un-self-consciousness, frankly and powerfully laying out the squalor of their existence without any seeming sense that life can be anything else but squalid. Seldom may himself seem rather like deus ex machina from a plotting perspective, but he serves to save both Custis and the narrative from utter annihilation. The snug warmth of Seldom’s home and the little family he and Custis and the baby have formed contrasts powerfully with the frigid internal winter that Custis has survived, allowing both Custis and the reader to hope for redemption. (Fiction. YA)



2) "The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore" by Joan Lowery Nixon

A brittle (not brutal) kidnapping with a Sam-Bronfman inflection and, belatedly, a modicum of mystery. Houston heiress Christina Lattimore, granddaughter of tyrannical oil mogul Christabel, is seized and held by--it will be apparent to any sluggard--the proprietors of a local greasy spoon; but when the police close in, the guilty pair claim that Christina conspired with them to extract money from her grandmother. And Christina can't prove otherwise, nor, horrors, get anyone but a young newsman to believe her. She knows someone else was involved--and newsman Kelly, shockingly, lengthens the short list of suspects to include wheeler-dealer Christabel. Turns out it was housekeeper Della all along (she has an ex-convict son) but Kelly isn't blameless--he was really using Christina to advance his own career. The moral is stand on your own, like Christabel, even if it means saying good-by to her millions. But none of this plastic cast including Christina, is worth a second thought.



3) "Wish You Were Dead" by Todd Strasser

Carefully plotted, this suspenseful novel blends the traditional with new tech details to successful end. Popular but kind Madison is the protagonist of what can be described as an almost archetypal teen thriller about a high-school clique being stalked (and, one by one, abducted) by an unknown villain. Interspersed throughout Madison’s first-person narrative are blog postings by a bullied student at their school; each time she posts about a slight by one of her peers, that person mysteriously goes missing. Also peppered throughout are deliciously evil monologues from the perspective of the kidnapper that are both titillating and chilling. In keeping with the tradition of horror thrillers, readers will shake their heads at the implausibility of some of the characters’ actions (for example, what mother would leave her daughter to go to an all-day meeting just after not one but three of her closest friends have been abducted?). However, realism is not the point here, and an impressive number of red herrings will keep readers guessing right up to the satisfying conclusion. (Thriller. 13 & up)




4) "What Happened to Cass McBride?" by Gail Giles

In this harrowing, brutal mystery, college student Kyle Kirby believes a snarky rejection letter written by popular Cass McBride may have driven his younger, love-thirsty nerd of a brother to hang himself. To avenge his death, Kyle drugs Cass, kidnaps her and buries her in a wooden box underneath the ground. He inserts a plastic tube from the surface into the box for oxygen, and maniacally waits for her to talk. All of this happens within the first 20 pages and what unfolds next are the thoughts, fears and memories running through the minds of Kyle and Cass as the terrible evening unfolds. If the plot alone isn’t disturbing enough to yank readers up by their bootstraps and catapult them headfirst into the horrors that are about to befall the two, Giles’s jagged, terse, just-the-facts narrative only amplifies their claustrophobically dire situation. There is no light shed on the human condition, no touching moments of patient understanding. There are hardly any characters for teens to look up to, and, in true Giles form, nothing ties up neatly. It’s just plain chilling, and that’s what makes it brilliant. A damn scary read. (Fiction. YA)




5) "When Jeff Comes Home" by Catherine Atkins

An accomplished, intense, and powerful first novel about what happens when a kidnapped boy is returned to his family. After two and a half years, the man called Ray, who stole Jeff from his family at a roadside rest stop, delivers him back home. Atkins plunges into the depths of Jeff’s tangled consciousness, conjuring his terror, his bottomless degradation, his lingering horror of himself over what he did to survive. While who Ray was and what he did to Jeff remain mostly unstated, the effects on Jeff are ghastly and transparent. Jeff’s intelligent, driven father, who has lost so much of his own life in the search for his son, tries to control Jeff’s recovery, too. While his rigidity is fearsome, the cost to him, and to Jeff’s stepmother and siblings, is fierce. What Jeff has to face—his return to his family and to school, his dealings with the FBI and others who had searched for him, his ugly, overpowering emotions—is drawn candidly but never sensationally. Readers will not be able to view incidents of kidnapping and sexual abuse in the same way again. (Fiction. 13+)



6) "The Night She Disappeared" by April Henry

When a popular high-school girl disappears while delivering pizza at her part-time job, her two fellow employees and classmates try to figure out what happened.

Drew Lyle takes the call, Kayla Cutler delivers the pizza, but the man ordering it wants to know if the girl who drives the Mini Cooper—that’s Gabie Klug—will be the delivery girl. When Kayla doesn’t return, Drew calls the police and the mystery kicks in. Who was the man; what happened to Kayla; why did he ask about Gabie; and, as time begins to pass, is Kayla still alive? Neither Drew nor Gabie, who go to the same high school as Kayla but are work rather than social friends, knows anything, but they are determined to find out. The thriller is narrated using a collage technique. Interspersed with the kids’ and perpetrator’s first-person accounts are police reports, 911 transcripts, webpages, interviews, etc., which add interest and texture to what otherwise would be a straight genre tale. The police seem amazingly obtuse, Gabie’s belief that Kayla is alive is given no realistic, clue-based hook and the third quarter has some pacing problems. Still, Gabie and Drew’s budding relationship is believable, and it has a strong wingding climax followed by a feel-good ending.

Unexceptional but solid. (Mystery. 12 & up)





7) "Dead to You" by Lisa McMann

Nine years have passed since Ethan Manuel de Wilde stepped into a stranger’s car and disappeared. Now 16 and restored to his family, Ethan begins to settle down into this new life.

His brother only vaguely remembers the day of the abduction, and his parents had a new child shortly after he vanished. There are some gaps in his memory, of course, but Ethan reconnects with his childhood best friend and new crush, Cami, and adapts to school. But when his younger brother Blake starts obsessing over Ethan’s flawed memories, Ethan’s facade of normality cracks, and he starts to look for a way out. McMann’s narrative is layered and emotional, with constant questions about family dynamics, identity and reconciliation. While an amnesia-based plot risks a quick foray into formula, this resists, balancing the fractured nature of Ethan’s recollections nicely with the character's development. The sibling rivalry builds secondary tension and suspense, especially as more and more gaps appear in Ethan’s anecdotes. While the romance between Ethan and Cami is a bit forced, the love between Ethan and his little sister Gracie is genuinely touching.

An updated abduction novel for a generation that has never seen a missing child’s face on a milk carton. (Suspense. 13 & up)



8) "The Last Good Day of the Year" by Jessica Warman

Ten years after the widely publicized kidnapping of Sam's baby sister, Turtle, Sam and her family return to live in the home where the abduction took place.

In a detail-rich, nostalgic narrative voice, Sam describes the fateful night and its aftermath. It was 1986; Sam was 7 and Turtle, 4. Alternating chapters take readers to 1996, when Sam and her altered, numbed family return to Shelocta. Sam's older sister, Gretchen, whose much-older boyfriend was eventually convicted of Turtle's murder, has come back to Shelocta from Texas; Hannah, the 5-year-old sister everyone agrees is serving as Turtle's replacement in her parents' minds, flits innocently through the action, unaware of her family's history. Tension among family members and with old neighbors, former acquaintances, and Sam's childhood best friend drives the largely atmospheric story forward. Interspersed throughout are excerpts from the book an investigative journalist has written about Turtle's case. These interview transcripts and outsider descriptions of family members add to the pervasive sense of distance and fragility in a community blown apart by trauma. Oddly, the resolution is far more plot-based than the lead-up would suggest. Many of the character-based questions (When will Hannah learn about what happened to Turtle? What sort of relationship will Sam and Remy have now?) go unanswered.

Hauntingly written but leaves readers wondering, what now? (Mystery. 14 & up)



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