Novel Review: Reality Check by Peter Abrahams

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Genre: YA Mystery

Publisher: HarperTeen

Release Date: 2009

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Will Cody save clea before it's too late? QB of the varsity football team. Passing grades in all his classes. Dating the hottest—and smartest—girl at school. Summer job paying more than minimum wage. Things in Cody's world seem to be going pretty well. Until, that is, his girlfriend, Clea, is sent off to boarding school across the country, and a torn ACL ends his high school football career. But bad things come in threes—or in Cody's case, sixes and twelves—and the worst is yet to come. While limping through town one day, Cody sees a newspaper headline: "Local Girl Missing." Clea, now his ex, has disappeared from her boarding school in Vermont, and the only clue is a letter she sent to Cody the morning of her disappearance. With that as his guide, Cody sets out to find out what happened. Once in Vermont, he unearths the town's secrets—and finds out that football isn't the only thing he's good at.

This is another edge-of-your-seat suspense novel by the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author of Down the Rabbit Hole.

The Cover:

I'm honestly not a big fan of the cover above. It's a very stereotypical mystery cover, and it doesn't really have any specific characteristics for this book. Plus, it's not even very nice to look at. I don't like the close up of a face on the bottom half, in particular.
The second cover, on the side, is better. The woods actually have a part of the book, it still feels like a mystery, and it overall just looks better to me. I particularly like the yellow circle with the person running.

Review:

“Screw your courage to the sticking place / and we’ll not fail.” This is a quote from another book, but it’s important in this one, and I liked it.

I’ve read Abrahams’ Echo Falls series and remember really enjoying it. This one was not quite as good, but enjoyable.

Cody is a football player, but not very good academically. He’s going out with Clea, and he really likes her, but after she’s forced to move away to a boarding school, she goes missing. And then he gets an injury and starts skipping school. So he decides to go look for Clea.

Cody is a little slow sometimes, but I liked him. I understood why he did what he did, and why he went looking for Clea.

Honestly, my biggest problem was that I didn’t feel much emotion from the characters. I had a hard time getting close to Cody and Clea, because I didn’t get a lot of feeling out of them. They weren’t rounded enough for me to get really attached.

The story was also really slow. Before the mystery happens, it’s slow, and after the mystery starts, the story is slow. I wanted it to be more fast-paced and exciting, and it really wasn’t. The ending was good, and when the revelation was happening it was more exciting, but it didn’t really keep me glued to the page. The writing was really plain, too, which didn't help keep me glued to the page, either.

Still, I enjoyed it for the most part. I do want to pick up another of Abrahams’ books, because I want it to be good. I want it to be exciting, so I want to give him another shot.