Favorite by Karen McQuestion

On my eleventh birthday, my mother disappeared. That morning my mom drove Jason and me to school. When we arrived, she helped me carry in a large Tupperware container full of cupcakes, made small talk with my teacher, told me to have a good day and kissed me good-bye. I never saw her again. 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 unshakable 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.



Very predictable, but something about it kept me reading even when I knew everything that was going to happen. Good YA book, but I wouldn't rave about it to others.



2 stars

A Scattered Life by Karen McQuestion

Free spirit Skyla Plinka is enjoying her normal day to day life with her husband Thomas and daughter Nora, a stark contrast from her childhood which she spent moving from place to place with her dad after her mother died. A new family moves on to their block, and Skyla becomes instant friends with the mother, Roxanne. They get together daily, much to her husband's chagrin, and it is the first true friendship Skyla has ever had. When a tragedy strikes Roxanne's family, Skyla must chose to finally open herself up and let others in.

I don't really know what else to say about this book. This review is terrible, along with the previous one, I guess because the books were completely pointless to me. It kept me reading, which is why it gets on star higher than The Friday Night Knitting Club, but I kept waiting for something to happen that never did.

2 stars