Horn Book (Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2005)

Unnerved by her mother's impending marriage, thirteen-year-old Sam begins to pry into old family tragedies. Why doesn't her father ever contact her? What really happened ten years ago when her twin sister died, and why was her body never found? Eerie coincidences and melodramatic revelations power this fast-paced, but often predictable, mystery about loss, discovery, and forgiveness.

ALA Booklist (Sun May 01 00:00:00 CDT 2005)

When Samantha was three years old, her twin, Sarah, drowned in a local quarry while canoeing with their father. The grief rocked her parents' already tenuous marriage. Her mother and father divorced, and Samantha, now 13, hasn't seen or heard from her dad in 10 years--with the exception of a postcard picturing a monkey from the San Diego Zoo. After trying various methods to find her father, Samantha and a friend visit a psychic, but Sam comes away confused by the psychic's revelation that her sister isn't dead. Sam's pursuit for the truth, which includes an Internet people search, leads her from her Clearwater, Iowa, home to Minnesota, where she finds her answers. The healing comes a little too easily in the end, but middle-graders looking for a simple mystery will be pleased, and the story may inspire them to think about the concepts of identity and family that are threaded through the story.

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-Samantha was three when her twin sister drowned in the local Iowa quarry and her father left. Now 13, she is determined to investigate the past, because her mother refuses to talk about it. Best friend Angela, not all that happy with her own absentee father, can't see what the big deal is, but is willing to help her in her investigation. Despite the fact that Sam and Angela defy parental authority, cross state lines, navigate public transport, and convince more than one person that the impossible is possible, there's not much detecting going on. The clues fall into Sam's lap. Searching into the past is not an unusual plot in children's books. Still, Butler has a simplicity of narrative voice that makes the story easy to read while reflecting the often-complex emotions of children forced to deal with things that have long been buried. It is the way that the author conveys these emotions that provides the most lingering memories of this fast-paced suspense novel.-Carol A. Edwards, Douglas County Libraries, Castle Rock, CO Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Voice of Youth Advocates

Samantha, fourteen, is a native of the small Iowa town where she lives with her no-nonsense mother and hangs out with her best and patient friend, Angela. Sam's mother is about to remarry, and although Sam has no real objection to her mother's choice of partners, the marriage itself awakens in her a latent curiosity about her father. The family history, as Sam knows it, is that he disappeared after the accidental drowning death of Sam's twin sister, Sarah, when the girls were three. When Angela's father-divorced and remarried-invites Angela to visit for a week, Sam goes along because she is pretty sure her own father is living close to Angela's. What Sam discovers is incredible: Not only has she successfully tracked down her father, but also he is living with the very much alive-but renamed-Sarah. There is more than coincidence and wish fulfillment in this quick read. The adults and their relationships with the various teens are nicely drawn, with far more realism than the twisting events. Sidekick Angela is a pillar of strength to flighty Sam. Sam herself comes to see how psychologically dangerous for others it can be to pursue one's own wish for satisfaction. There are some odd choices of words here, such as a reference to Sam's mother having gotten herself "knocked up" in a text that is otherwise G-rated. Although not great literature, this story will appeal to girls with a budding interest in how the individual influences family dynamics.-Francisca Goldsmith.