Favorite by Karen McQuestion

Title: Favorite

Author: Karen McQuestion

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Age Group: Young Adult

Grade: 75% or C

Angie Favorite was just eleven years old when her mother disappeared, leaving Angie and her brother Jason to be raised by their grandmother while their rock-star father hit the road with his band. Since that day, Angie has gone through the motions of everyday life. She thinks she has everyone fooled — until the summer morning when she’s abducted from a mall parking lot. She narrowly escapes and her attacker, Scott Bittner, is arrested, but the weirdness has just begun. When Angie receives a letter from Scott’s mother, entreating her to meet so that she can apologize for her son’s actions, the girl reluctantly agrees. But it is soon obvious that Scott’s attack wasn’t random at all and that there is more to the strange Mrs. Bittner than meets the eye. In fact, she may hold the key to Angie’s mother’s disappearance.This book was short, but packed a lot into that shortness. Due to the shortness though, we only had one plot thread going on. The book was an interesting mystery but it could of been longer. The abruptness of it all put me off some. Whenever something would happen there wasn't much leading up to it and seemed a bit rushed at times.

I really liked Angie, thankfully. In a story like this its hard not to just like the character because you feel sorry for them and their situation. But I genuinely found Angie to be pretty good character. Some of her actions though...I just didn't understand. It really bothers me when a character's conscience is telling them NOT to do something, and a whole page is spent on explaining why it is such a bad idea, but they do it anyway. Angie did this a couple of times. At the beginning of the novel when she did this I was annoyed, but as the situations got more desperate I could understand why she would make the decisions that she did.

The mystery was good at the beginning, but as we got near the end, it was easy to predict what was going to happen. The best things about mysteries though, is the explanations. So even though I knew what was going to happen, I didn't really care. What I find to be the best part is not the what but the why. And the explanation of this book was really good. I could not have predicted the back story behind it all.

I wish we could have gotten a couple of other characters more fleshed out. I know McQuestion is great at creating fantastic characters, but they were lacking here. I was interested in Angie's brother but he was barely in the forefront. There were a couple of other characters that could have added a lot to the novel.

Overall I had a good time reading this book, but I wish it could have been longer. I would recommend reading this book if you're a bit short on time but would like a good mystery.