Favorite

Favorite
by Karen McQuestion
April 2011

Summary:

Five years have passed since Angie Favorite’s mother, Laura, disappeared without a trace, and Angie still hasn’t recovered. Sure, things look normal on the surface—she goes to school, works her summer job, and argues with her older brother Jason—but she can’t shake the feeling that Laura didn’t leave by choice. Angie’s dad does the best he can, but his work as a musician keeps him on the road and away from home, where it’s up to Angie’s grandmother to keep an eye on the kids. She can’t be with them all the time, though, and she can’t help Angie when she is snatched from a mall parking lot by Scott Bittner. The girl narrowly escapes, and Bittner is arrested, but he takes his life in jail before he can offer an explanation for his crime. When his mother contacts Angie, begging forgiveness on her son’s behalf, the girl agrees to meet with her in hopes of finding answers to the seemingly random attack. But when she arrives at the massive Bittner estate, she is overcome by an unshakeable sense of foreboding…

Part thriller, part coming-of-age tale, Favorite is an engrossing young adult novel in which nothing—and no one—is as it seems.

Review:

This book was an extremely quick read, and on top of that I was also extremely anxious to finish and figure out everything that was happening.

While Favorite was a suspenseful read, I can't say that there is anything entirely wonderful about it. The story itself was interesting, but it also seemed a little bit out there and so it was hard to think of it as a realistic event. The one thing that I can say is that it stuck in my mind: the night after finishing this book I had a dream that was very clearly influenced by the events, and it was actually kind of freaky and so I can definitely say the book had a chill factor.

Overall, I can see that Karen McQuestion has talent as a writer. In case you're unfamiliar with her, she self-published for Kindle, and now she's got a contract with AmazonEncore and so her books are being published in print. I'm very glad that she has this amazing opportunity, and I also believe she deserves it. However, I didn't enjoy Favorite as much as I thought I would, but I am looking forward to reading Life On Hold. It seems to be a book that I would really enjoy.

But don't let my review of Favorite turn you off... it really is a good book, just not exactly my cup of tea.

Jane