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Daisy and Henry are best friends, and they know all each other’s secrets.  Or, so Daisy thinks, until she wakes up one morning to find that Henry and his family have disappeared without a trace. Daisy suspects Henry’s disappearance is connected to their seriously awkward meeting the night before, but then she finds a note from Henry, containing just the words “SAVE ME.”  Deeply worried, Daisy convinces her unemployed brother to take her on a rescue mission into the California mountains. As they begin to home in on Henry’s exact location, they also start to find some disturbing clues… clues that call into question everything Daisy believes she knows about her friend.  Why is he so hard to find? What kind of trouble is he in, exactly? And most importantly, who is actually saving who?

To start, can we just take a look at this cover? I picked this up for myself as a little present for being accepted into university, and it was definitely a cover buy. But it actually didn’t disappoint – at least not completely!

This book is definitely a page-turner. It’s so quick and easy, I read it in a matter of hours and I never really read that quickly! It’s quite enthralling and entertaining, and I did really want to know what was going to happen in the rambling plot. Talking of the plot, it started really well. The first 50-100 pages completely captured my attention, and then things get strange. In fact, this book turns weirdddd. And I’m a little weird, but it might even be weirder than me. It just turned into something I wasn’t ready for, or expecting at all.

So this book ends up being just completely absurd. Without giving away a lot of spoilers, it felt incredibly strange and random and I was left almost laughing with the pure anti-realism of it all. It’s cool that Snow wanted to explore something unique and not really covered in YA, and in some ways I think it’s done really well, but also what what what.

Talking of weirdness, this book also includes a family called the Dunkles. This family has 7 children with names all beginning with K and they were, of course, home schooled. Can I just confirm, as someone who was home schooled for 6 years, WE ARE NOT THE DUNKLES. Some of us are actually pretty normal, and live in normal houses with normal, conventional families. And personally, I don’t want my home schooling years to be represented by the Dunkles.

After all that negativity, I still can’t say this book was bad. If you take it at face value and don’t expect a great work of literature or a masterpiece, it’s really entertaining. Sure, there are mistakes and plot holes and it’s certainly not perfect, but it’s a fun adventure all the same.

★★★★
3.5 stars

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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