The Girl on the Run

January 4, 2016
Not much is left to the imagination in this grisly thriller from Olsen (Envy). High school sophomore Rylee Cassidy and her seven-year-old brother, Hayden, leave home immediately after she comes home from school to discover their stepfather has been killed and their mother is gone. The siblings aren’t strangers to life on the road—along with their mother, they have been evading a dangerous man for years. As Rylee follows her mother’s clues in an attempt to save her and get revenge, Olsen unspools the disturbing details of this man’s identity and the siblings’ family history through Rylee’s pulpy, hard-edged narration (“He’ll never get to enjoy his fame the way that I will revel in his death”). Thin on character development and heavy on plot machinations, Olsen’s story tends to sensationalize Rylee’s mother’s horrific past as it digs into the mind of a serial killer. Rylee is unflinching in the face of danger but, as a protagonist, she isn’t much else, which leaves the novel reading like the equivalent of a TV procedural. Ages 13–up.

January 15, 2016
Bestselling true-crime writer Olsen takes a successful stab at thriller writing for teens. Ever since 15- (or maybe 16-) year-old Rylee (that's her name this time around) can remember, she's been on the run with her mother, stepfather, and younger brother, Hayden. They change towns, aliases, schools, and appearances every time her mother's stalker catches up to them. When they find their mother missing and their stepfather murdered, Rylee and Hayden must flee on their own--and rescue her mother before the stalker carries out his final plan. Groomed by her years of lying, Rylee is well-equipped to go undercover, but she's not prepared emotionally when she discovers the true identity of her mother's stalker and his connection to murdered teen girls in the past. The tension in the taut, first-person narrative ratchets even higher when Rylee's research uncovers not only that this villain is a serial killer, but that all of his victims only survived one week of his torture. She has only days to save her mother--and possibly even herself. And as she searches for clues about her mother's disappearance, she uncovers her own life, too. Without dropping a beat, the story ends in a crescendo of danger and turmoil and paves the way for the vigilante teen to take on more criminals in subsequent books. (Thriller. 14 & up)

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February 1, 2016

Gr 10 Up-Rylee comes home from school one day to hear the water running. She assumes her younger brother has left it on, and goes into the bathroom to shut it off. Then she finds her stepfather lying on the floor with a knife sticking out of his chest and her mother gone. Readers discover that Rylee and her family have been on the run for almost all of her life. The teen has yet to realize how deep the lies that she has been told go. When she follows the clues her mother has left, she learns that her real father is a serial rapist and killer-and her mother is the victim who got away. Rylee believes her mother has just seven days to live before he will kill her. Though the story line should grab readers, the plot just does not hold together. The misogynistic story is poorly written and unbelievable, and at times it is difficult to know which character is speaking the dialogue. Readers are just never sure why exactly it is that Rylee's mother-and her stepfather-went along with her violent father for almost two decades. Teens looking for a page-turning story of survival would be better off with April Henry's The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die (Holt, 2013) or Gail Giles's Dead Girls Don't Write Letters (Roaring Book, 2003). VERDICT Not recommended for purchase.-Deanna McDaniel, Genoa Middle School, OH

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2017
Lies, betrayals, murders, kidnapping, sexual abuse, and other lurid crimes drive the plot of this thriller. Narrator Rylee searches for her abducted mother, intending to murder her captor, even after discovering it's her biological father. The desperate search lays bare Rylee's own unstable emotional state. Despite the attention-grabbing premise, gratuitous gore and an unconvincing narrative voice make this missable.

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)