Wake Up Missing

Looking for an adrenaline pumping edge of your seat read? Wake Up Missing by Kate Messner is just the book.

Synopsis:

Meet Quentin, a middle school football star from Chicago...
Sarah, an Upstate New York girls’ hockey team stand-out...
Ben, a horse lover from the Pacific Northwest...
And Cat, an artistic bird watcher from California.
The four have nothing in common except for the head injuries that land them in an elite brain-science center in the Florida Everglades. It’s known as the best in the world, but as days pass, the kids begin to suspect that they are subjects in an experiment that goes far beyond treating concussions….and threatens their very identities. They’ll have to overcome their injuries – and their differences – to escape, or risk losing themselves forever.

Wake Up Missing is a mind bending twisty ride full of adventure and intrigue. Messner sets the tone perfectly from the beginning. There is a sense that nothing is quite right or as it seems. The reader is kept off balance from chapter one, which fits with Cat's difficulty in keeping hers. The clues are revealed slowly, and just when you think you know what's going on there is a shift. The twisty plot comes with boat chases through swamps, conspiracies, fears of who to trust, quick risky escapes, and some rather seedy bad guys of more than one variety. Messner maintains a real sense of danger for the kids, while keeping it from being too terrifying at the same time. I also appreciate Messner's willingness to show the messy outcomes inevitable in such a plot.

The kids are typical 12 year olds. Some of the things they choose to do (searching offices, sneaking around, taking a kayak out on the swamp in an attempt to escape) are not the best plans, but perfectly in tune with a middle school mentality. They all have different personalities and issues, but have to work together. Cat is telling the story, but all of them are key members of the team. It was interesting to see how each of them reacted to what they discover, and how they chose to deal with it.

Wake Up Missing had my heart pounding in many places and I was frantically flipping pages to see what was going to happen next. My kids were forced to wait for their dinner. I can see this having the same spell binding effect on the kids who read it. Messner is one of my daughter's favorite authors and I know she's going to be thrilled by this one. (She has to wait for the actual copy to come as I wouldn't let her run off with my Nook.)

I read an e-galley received from the publisher, Bloomsbury Walker, made available via NetGalley. Wake Up Missing is available for purchase September 10.

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