Girl, Stolen by April Henry

No connection to Girl, Interrupted.

Griffin was only thinking of how proud his father would be when he stole the fancy Escalade from the mall parking lot. Unfortunately for him, he didn't realize there was someone sleeping in the back. Now Griffin doesn't know what to do. He only meant to take a car, not kidnap a girl. The girl, Cheyenne, turns out not to only have pneumonia, but is blind. Griffin's father plans to get money from Cheyenne's father to give her back safely, but Griffin is beginning to wonder if giving Cheyenne back is part of the plan at all.

So I got all judgy on this early on because the back cover was so melodramatic. "How will Cheyenne survive this nightmare? She's not only sick - she's BLIND!" And then the beginning seemed so far-fetched. When the kid realized there was someone in the back of the car, and that she was blind, wouldn't he just bail? But as it went along I bought in more to the "in over your head" place it was going to and how one bad decision forces a whole bunch of other really bad decisions.

Emily the Strange: Stranger and Stranger by Rob Reger

Emily is an evilish, gothish, punkish scientific genius who main goals in life seem to be constructing elaborate pranks to pull on unsuspecting people, painting large murals, skateboarding, guitar playing, and snuggling with her cats. Emily thinks it will be a FABULOUS idea to make a duplicating machine and duplicate herself but, gasp, things don’t work out as planed!

Not going to lie. I didn’t finish it. I didn’t have to though. I flipped around enough to confirm what I knew was going to happen happened. But really, should I expect more from a book based on a character from a sticker that promotes a skateboarding clothing line? I don’t think I should.

Ready? I’m going to spoil the book for you. If you don’t want it spoiled, stop reading now. I’m about to give it away. This is your last chance! ::SPOILER:: It turns out Emily didn’t duplicate herself at all! She split herself! So each part got some parts of her personality! One half of her is super evil and trying to destroy the world and kill the other half of her, which is not evil but just loves her cats and pranking and skateboarding! Now the not evil Emily has to figure out what zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oh, I’m sorry. I drifted off. That’s enough for the spoiler. ::END OF SPOILER::

Right. So. Not Evil Emily was super dumb. How did she not figure this out? Maybe the Evil Emily got all the brains in the split. I don’t know. There’s nothing really redeeming about this book, aside from the fact that if you have reluctant readers who are familiar with the character, they might be into this