Shock Point

This is a book that once you start it, you won't put it down until you've reached the last page.

In case you were wondering, there is a modern master of YA suspense. Her name is April Henry, and her book SHOCK POINT will take you to that place where an evil stepparent can ruin your life and being sent away to school can be more dangerous than you ever imagined. Cassie Streng is your average high school girl living in a new town with a new stepfather, who is a child psychiatrist. But when Cassie discovers that the experimental drug, Socom, he has been prescribing led to the suicide of three teenagers, she becomes his next target. She is abducted from her own driveway and taken across the border to Peaceful Cove, a Mexican boot camp for troubled teens. The rules at Peaceful Cove are only the beginning of the horrors that Cassie faces at this "school." As her stepfather works to put the drug on the market, Cassie must find a way to escape Peaceful Cove and let the public know the truth -- before it's too late to save herself and future Socom patients. These are my three favorite things about SHOCK POINT: 1. Cassie believes in her own strength as she fights against the injustice around her. 2. Cassie holds friendship and loyalty above her own well-being. 3. This book kept my blood pressure up and my muscles ready to run. I felt Cassie's pain and determination. This is my favorite quote from SHOCK POINT: "So it's like Ritalin, Prozac, and a mother's prayers combined?"

When Cassie Streng comes home from school one day, she is abducted by two rough strangers. She fights them, screaming, until her mother arrives and proceeds to hand Cassie's suitcase to the men. Cassie's stepfather, Rick, tells her he's found crystal meth hidden in her room and that she will find the help she needs where she's headed. But Cassie has never used drugs and knows that Rick must have planted the meth. Unable to believe this is happening to her, she's shackled into the back of her captors' van as her parents watch. In a flashback Cassie discovers that Rick, a psychiatrist, has been administering an experimental drug to his troubled teen patients; three of them committed suicide. When Cassie confides in her classmate, Thatcher, he hatches a plan to show Rick's incriminating records to a newspaper reporter. They must tell people the truth about the drug, and thereby prevent more deaths. However, before the two can get an adult to listen seriously to them, Rick has arranged for Cassie to be shanghaied to Peaceful Cove, a brutal boot camp in Mexico for teenagers with behavior problems. Peaceful Cove is more like a prison than a school or a camp. Cassie's clothes and other personal belongings are taken from her. She's locked in a closet-sized room and warned that armed guards, barbed wire, and a 200-foot cliff will keep her from escaping. Cruel punishments are commonplace. And it's all legal, because her parents signed the contract. Not only is Cassie totally cut off from the world, she must learn a million rules. She can't cross her legs when she sits. She can't wear her hair down. She can't raise her eyes. She can't talk, sit, or stand without permission. Cassie soon finds out that her incarceration is sure to last months if not years. However, if she doesn't escape and expose her stepfather's use of the experimental drug, more kids are likely to die. Cassie soon has a friend, and a plan...but how can the plan possibly work? SHOCK POINT is a riveting tale of survival and determination, chockfull of suspense and urgency. Fair warning: once you start reading, you will find it nearly impossible to close the book until the very end. --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon ([email protected])

When Cassie Streng is abducted by two men in a white van right in front of her own house, she can't at first figure out what's going on. When her mother comes outside and does nothing to stop the men, confusion turns to panic. When her stepfather, Dr. Rick Wheeler, enters the picture, things suddenly become clear. Rick planted drugs in Cassie's room, convinced her mother that she needed more help than they could give her to straighten her out, and is shipping her out to a school/prison in Mexico. Cassie figures this all out in a few minutes, once she's handcuffed in the back of the van, virtually kidnapped by men who work for Peaceful Cove, and desperate to escape. She knows why this is happening, but she has no way to convince anyone that she's being held against her will for something she didn't do. Rick Wheeler is a psychiatrist who moved his new family--wife Jackie, stepdaughter Cassie, and soon-to-be-born son away from the town of Minor to Portland. Back in their old town, Rick had a practice that specialized in helping troubled youths. You know the ones--they resist parental authority, smoke, drink, maybe do drugs or have premarital sex. They were the "bad" kids, and Dr. Wheeler used them as guinea pigs for a drug called Socom. Socom's creators billed their new drug, given as an injection, as a breakthrough in adolescent behavior modification. It might be, too, except for the deadly side effects that seem to take place in some of the youths, ending in their deaths. Cassie found out about all of this when she snooped through her stepfather's home files. She was concerned enough, especially since Rick keeps mentioning to her mother that she herself should be put on Socom, to do some investigating of her own. When she learns that three former students of her old school in Minor died after being on the drug, she enlists the help of her new classmate, Thatcher Hedrick, and the two devise a plan to bring Rick and his deceptions to light with the aid of a Portland newspaper columnist. Before they can do that, however, Cassie is kidnapped, with no way of letting Thatcher--or anyone else--know that Rick is behind the plot that's taken her out of the country. Now she's far away from home in Mexico, and although she's making some new contacts and friends there, she's worried about what's happening back in Portland. SHOCK POINT is a great story, full of action, adventure, and mystery. The plot is very believable, especially in this day and age where drugs seem to be the choice of so many people to cure their ills. As Cassie works from Mexico to bring down Rick and the company that produces Socom, Thatcher works from Portland to rescue Cassie and protect the innocents who are still taking the drug--some without their consent. A highly recommend thriller for both teens and adults!

The premise of this book intrigued me. I soon forgot that it was a book for young adults. I inhaled the story in two sittings and thought about Cassie's plight when I wasn't reading. I have two neices who will get this book for their birthdays and I highly recommend it as an adult read as well as for teens. Good writing, excellent plausibility, and not dependent on grahic scenes and language.