Black Mirror

This is an excellent mystery thiller. It is about a girl named Frances and her bbrother, Daniel, commited suicide. She doesn't think so, so she investigates and talks to his friends at Unity. She discovers many things that horify her. I loved it.

Frances's only friend was her brother, Daniel. But when they started at Pettengill school they started to grow apart, and now, 2 years later, she realizes that she didn't know anything about Daniel. He apparently killed himself with an overdose of heroin, and Frances feels terrible. To try to make herself feel better she wants to join Unity, the charity that gave them scholarships to the school. Daniel was very involved with Unity and was ashamed that Frances didn't want to join. But now when she wants to her brother's girlfriend Saskia, and most of the other members don't want her. She is confused by it and the more she finds out, the more she notices is strange with Unity.Black Mirrow is a good book that I couldn't stop reading. Frances is an interesting character and I can relate to alot of what she is feeling. The other characters were well portrayed too and it was as much them as the plot of the story that made me want to find out what was going to happen. At the end I was completely suprised. Nancy Werlin is a good writer and all her books are great, but this one really made me think.

Black Mirror is the story of a young girl searching for many things- a sense of family, her true identity and peace with herself. The book follows a bumpy road of life after Frances's brother Daniel commits suicide. Frances, shy and suffering low self-concept, feels that without her brother, she should make some sort of effort to fit into the school she never really belonged to. Her odd life with divorced parents (her mother studying Buddhism miles away) and mixed heritage leads her to believe she can never fit in anywhere.The author makes the characters both realistic and unique, creating an environment to completely immerse the reader in.Frances decides to join Unity, a school charity group. But as the mentally challenged janitor James points out, it's "all fake work." Unity is a front for something else, and Frances and James are the only ones who know. Did her brother Daniel really commit suicide? Was there a note? And why is her art teacher so insistant that she join Unity, anyway? Read this, one of the best for YA in 2001, to find out.

Ms. Werlin has a sure hand with psychological suspense and for creating and relating to teenaged characters. Frances Leventhal is another unique creation in YA literature, and Ms. Werlin pulls no punches in telling Frances's story. If you want to be on the edge of your seat but still care deeply about the people you are reading about, you can't go wrong with anything by Nancy Werlin.

The best thing about this book, I think, is the characters. They were very well developed. Frances, who is so solemn and depressed. James, her love object, who isn't who he seems. Saskia, the cold and scheming little witch. Andy, retarded but very gentle. Etc. While in general it wasn't as well executed as "Locked Inside" and "The Killer's Cousin" and "Are You Alone" I liked it a lot. I started reading it in a bus station and went kind of in a trance, forgetting the heat and the noise and exhaust. After I was finished I thought about it for a long time. Like, I still can't make up my mind about Saskia; whether what she did was good or bad. Or James for that matter, and what he thought about Frances. All in all: yet another wonderful book from Nancy; I can't wait to read the next one!