Friend Is Not a Verb

Friend is Not a Verb by Daniel Ehrenhaft (NY: HarperTeen, 2010).

The title of this novel leaped out at me from the library book shelf! How funny--and true--in this age of social networking. The story focuses on Henry, or Hen to his family and friends, Birnbaum's investigation of his sister Sarah's disappearance. Well, she has actually come back home after disappearing for a year, and Hen's pretty sure his parents knew where she was. Now that she's back, Hen assumes the circumstances will be revealed, but no. So he picks up his excellent bass rig and taxis to the loft of Gabriel Stern, one of Sarah's co-conspirators, on the pretense of taking bass lessons, but really to try to ferret out the reason for the top secret flight from NYC. Instead, Hen ends up stealing a manuscript diary that reveals mainly Gabriel's obsession with Sarah and some of the odd details of their foreign exodus.

There are other things percolating in Hen's life. His first-ever girlfriend, Petra, has dumped him, but he's eventually allowed to stay in her self-named band. He's thankful for the sympathy of his best friend and neighbor Emma who willingly gives her thoughts on all things Sarah, Petra, VH1 junk series, and their eerily synchronized dreams. He can't fathom the wacky popularity of the "Steal Your Parents' Money" campaign that has everyone talking. He even gets a job walking dogs for a rude British ex-pat. Where is all this heading? Hen wants answers, and his zany quest will keep readers turning the pages and laughing out loud while cheering him on to victory!

Great read for teen boys and girls, grades 7 & up. Language, sexual situations.

Scottish Mystery

Something Wicked: A Horatio Wilkes Mystery by Alan Gratz (NY: Dial, 2008).

Horatio lands in the middle of another dramatic murder mystery when he travels to a Scottish Highlands summer festival on a mountain in North Carolina with his friend Mac (whose girlfriend's name is....yes, Beth). While he resists wearing a kilt, Horatio can't help but investigate when Mac's grandfather, the founder of the festival, Duncan MacRae, is stabbed to death in the family tent. Duncan's son seems to be the culprit, but the evidence starts pointing in another direction, eerily in sync with the predictions of what Horatio had assumed was a fake psychic.

Danger, romance, bagpipes, and men in skirts--not to mention Shakespeare allusions--this mystery has it all! Great reading for tweens and teens, grades 7 & up. A bit of gore, sexual situations, language.

Be Careful What You Wish For!

Wish You Were Dead by Todd Strasser (NY: Egmont, 2009)

Soundview is supposed to be safe, so how is it possible that the most popular teens are disappearing? What's the link between Str-S-d's blogposts and these disappearances? Nice girl Madison leads a privileged life as a sheltered teen in a wealthy community, so she's frightened and perplexed when friends she's known for years go missing. She wants to trust the new guy in town, but should she? He seems to have secrets. Mysterious messages, vandalism, phantom sounds--this novel will have readers guessing. An excellent whodunit for high-school and up. Language, mature themes, intense situations.

Stone's Fall by Iain Pears (2009)

Stone's Fall is one of those sprawling historical epics that I generally avoid, but Pears has spiced it up with enough romance, passion, intrigue, politics, murder, suspense, and Euro-chic that I found myself willingly turning the 500-plus pages. The plot revolves around resolving the death, perhaps murder, of major industrialist John Stone, who fell from a window at his London home in 1909 (hence the novel's title). Stone's widow hires an unlikely journalist to ferret out the identity of a love child named as a benefactor in Stone's will, and so the story begins. The widow is beautiful, the journalist becomes enamored, the plot twists and turns through time (1909, 1890, 1867) and space (London, Paris, Venice) with war, munitions, international espionage, government bigwigs, and financial wheeling and dealing--all running amok to explain the story's beginning. NPR listed this novel as one of its summer reads for 2009!