Paris Hollings is missing, but she has left behind scavenger hunt style clues in silver Sharpie, affixed to surfaces with Hello Kitty Band-Aids, to help her younger sister, Leo, find her. The teens recently moved to Vegas from L.A. with their casino-dealer mom and gambling stepfather. Paris has graduated high school, but it is Leo who has pinned her dreams on Stanford and a medical career. While mired in a constant state of SAT retake prep, Leo follows Paris' scribbled notes all the way to L.A. and back again. Preble skillfully paces the quest as her character development gently unfolds along the desert highway. Readers are privy to deep, dark secrets and, like Preble's characters, are left to reconcile them with the unexpected owner of this painful past. As the hunt draws to an end, the motive behind the quest is devastatingly revealed. Still, resounding truths remain: the heartbreaking bond of these devoted sisters, the sadness of their family reality, and their shared gratitude that they will always be there for each other.

Gr 9 Up-Leo and Paris are sisters; very different personalities, fathered by different men, but bound together by their need for stability and support. Their mother, who has dragged them from town to town and man to man, now has them living with her latest acquisition, who seemed cool enough at first, but since moving to Las Vegas, has begun showing his true colors. Leo is fed up with their lifestyle, and is working hard to get into Stanford to study medicine. Paris, the artist, has no clearly defined plan beyond escaping her present circumstances. Late one night, Paris awakens Leo claiming that she's in need of pie and sympathy. At the diner, she dares Leo to talk to an attractive young man seated at a nearby table. Shortly after Leo accepts the dare, Paris disappears along with the car and Leo's cell phone. Max, amazingly accommodating for a stranger she's just met, offers Leo his help, and together they locate a cryptic, hastily written note from Paris containing an obscure clue and a plea for Leo to find her. What follows is a scavenger hunt in which notes bearing clues to various locations lead to more notes. In a dramatic climax, the steady, step-by-step progression of the plot takes a surprising turn and suddenly barrels forward, blindsiding readers with unexpected twists. An intricate guessing game of sisterly devotion, romance, and quiet desperation. Cary Frostick, formerly at Mary Riley Styles Public Library, Falls Church, VA

Leonora, known as Leo to her friends and family, begins the story awakening to her sister, Paris, demanding to be taken to an all-night diner for pie because she broke up with her boyfriend, Tobias. Leo agrees to go with her sister and ends up meeting a young man, Max, who works in a museum in Las Vegas that features the Bikini Atoll explosion. Once in the diner, Paris leaves Leo stranded but has set a scavenger hunt of sorts all throughout the city of Las Vegasnot to find a prize, but to find Paris. In the first cryptic note that Leo finds, Paris has written, "Stay calm, Leo. This is the only way. He's making me. You have to find me. xParis 0 00 1 36." Leo, who dreams of becoming a doctor, is certainly intelligent enough to figure out the clues that will lead her to her sister, which she sets out to do with Max, who has quickly become a love interest for Leo.The sisters' mother, who works at a casino in Las Vegas dealing blackjack and is rarely in the picture, has an alcoholic boyfriend who lives in their home, and sensitive readers will need to be made aware of such a circumstance. Readers who appreciate adventure with a dose of romance will certainly enjoy Preble's Finding Paris, as will those who are already her fans.Beth H. Green.