Sudden Moves: A Young Adult Mystery

Kelli Sue Landon
Outskirts Press (2010)
ISBN 9781432767136
Reviewed by Theresa La (age 17) for Reader Views (2/12)

“Sudden Moves” is a young adult mystery novel. The novel immediately captures the reader’s interest, just from the short summary on the back of the book. From the first page, the story has a very interesting plot; however, during the middle of the book, the storyline fell a bit flat. This was mainly because the romantic aspects of the story overtook the mystery aspects of the story, just after the mystery was heating up. However, the story soon picked up once again and the ending was interesting and appropriate to the reading level.

Katie Brashers has disappeared after spring break. She told her friends that she was vacationing in Florida but when everyone else returns to school, she had not returned. No one knew where she was including Katie’s boyfriend and Michelle Martin, one of Katie’s friends.  Michelle and Katie’s boyfriend become amateur detectives of sort. Though initially their findings are rather useless and they do not make any progress, which could possibly lead the reader to give up on the story, the two soon stumble on something much bigger than they ever expected. 

The characters were average high school students and very believable which added to the believability of the story, especially Katie’s mother’s character.  The book was not very long, only about 207 pages - a good size length, not too short that the reader felt rushed reading the story but not too long that the reader would want to flip pages to find the ending to the mystery more quickly. The cover picture was interesting and fit the story appropriately. This book would be appropriate mostly for preteens and early teens, from twelve to fifteen-years-old, but anyone older who enjoys a light mystery read would also enjoy “Sudden Moves” by Kelli Sue Landon.

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