This YA thriller came in the mail for possible review here at Semicolon. I was in the mood for something fast-paced and absorbing, so I picked it up out of my TBR pile and read it. Although it requires quite a bit of suspension of disbelief, it was high interest, and I finished the novel in one day.
“Nobody believes Jake. Except the terrorists.
After witnessing an act of domestic terrorism while training on his bike, Jake is found near death, with a serious head injury and unable to remember the plane crash or the aftermath that landed him in the hospital.
A terrorist leader’s teenage daughter, Betsy, is sent to kill Jake and eliminate him as a possible witness. When Jake’s mother blames his head injury for his tales of attempted murder, he has to rely on his girlfriend, Laurissa, to help him escape the killers and the law enforcement agents convinced that Jake himself had a role in the crash.”
I really kind of liked the book, even though I had to stretch to believe many of the things that happened to Jake. His girlfriend, Laurissa, does rescue him: at one point she carries him down a rope in her lap, rappelling from a second story hospital window. It’s the kind of thing that happens in action movies and TV shows, but I find it hard to visualize.
Betsy, the terrorist’s daughter, is part of a right-wing, anti-immigrant online group called Stormbreak, and she is also moderately unbelievable. She attempts to assassinate Jake at least twice, and both times she flakes out at the last minute. Part of the story is told from Betsy’s point of view, and I just found it difficult to understand her or sympathize with her. She and her terrorist dad attend a church called Dry Run Creek Baptist, and they somehow manage to reconcile their murdering, terrorist ways with their weekly attendance and the teaching received at that Baptist church. They used to attend Two Swords Baptist (where did that name come from?), where the pastor was sympathetic to their politics but also sort of a good guy? The church stuff was confusing and not very believable either.
At any rate, the entire book is like that, interesting but sort of hard to swallow. There’s a rogue FBI agent, also not very believable, and the things Jake manages to do, even with TBI and nails through his hand (don’t ask!) are amazing!
If you’re looking for a YA thriller, not much sex talk (but enough to make it definitely YA) and not much cursing (but enough that it was offensive and could have been left out), then this one will pass the time in the airport while you’re waiting for your flight to board. On second thought, that’s bad timing for this novel. Do not read before flying in an airplane if you have any fear of terrorists and airplanes . . .