\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\nKendall Fletcher is one of just 212 people who live in the community of Cryer\u2019s Cross.\u00a0 Her junior year ended with the disappearance of a girl from her class, and it\u2019s a relief to be starting over with a new school year. Maybe, she thinks, the familiar routines of school will relieve her obsessive thoughts about what happened to Tiffany Quinn.\u00a0 Kendall has OCD- obsessive compulsive disorder- and once she starts thinking about something, she can\u2019t let go. The OCD also forces her into repeating little rituals, and one of those rituals is tidying up her classroom every morning, which includes moving every desk to a specific place in the room. Kendall knows every one of those desks, and has even memorized the graffiti on each one.\u00a0 The appearance of two obviously Hispanic kids at the high school, Jacian and Marlena, feeds into Kendall\u2019s suspicions about Tiffany\u2019s disappearance, which only increase when her best friend\/boyfriend, Nico, disappears as well. As time passes, though, Kendall discovers just how unfounded her suspicions are.<\/p>\n
Cryer\u2019s Cross<\/em>\u00a0is a really creepy book. From early on you know there is somebody (or several people) who are very, very, angry\u2026 and who are seriously wrong in the head.\u00a0 Their thoughts appear at intervals, jagged on the page.\u00a0 The story is told in first person, from Kendall\u2019s point of view, but Kendall doesn\u2019t seem like the most reliable narrator.\u00a0 When you consider her obsession over both disappearances, the mysterious words she finds on the desks, her relationship with the missing Nico, and her irrational compulsions, she\u2019s a pretty good suspect, and we really don\u2019t know who else might have a motive, since Kendall, our viewpoint character, isn\u2019t familiar with all the secrets of Cryer\u2019s Cross.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that the supernatural is involved, and some terrifying (if logistically difficult to believe) things happen.\u00a0 It\u2019s gripping, if horrifying, in both a physical and psychological sense. What saves Kendall from the same fate as the others is her OCD. When it comes down to it, her \u201cdisability\u201d is the key to her survival, and the trust she\u2019s developed with Jacian means she\u2019s discovered and taken to safety before it\u2019s too late.\u00a0 Why all of this happened is a complete mystery that\u2019s only revealed at the end\u2026 but is it the end?\u00a0 It makes me shiver just to think about that possibility.<\/p>\nI give major props to Lisa McMann for her sensitive portrayal of someone with an invisible disability. I don\u2019t think I have ever read a description of a character with OCD who was as fully developed and three-dimensional as Kendall is.\u00a0 Yet, Cryer\u2019s Cross is not a \u201cmessage novel\u201d. It is a horror story. The way Kendall\u2019s personality, and her OCD, shape the story is organic- without it, the story would have a rather abrupt end- but it\u2019s not the focus of the book.\u00a0 I hope this will be a trend in YA fiction- but even if it isn\u2019t, I will definitely be seeking out the work of Lisa McMann.\u00a0 Highly, highly recommended.<\/p>\n
Contains: violence, mild kissing<\/p>\n
Reviewed by: Kirsten Kowalewski<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Simon Pulse, 2011 ISBN-13: 978-1416994817 Available: New \u00a0 Kendall Fletcher is one of just 212 people who live in the community of Cryer\u2019s Cross.\u00a0 Her junior year ended with the disappearance of a girl from her class, and it\u2019s a relief to be starting over with a new school year. Maybe, she thinks, the familiar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,171],"tags":[276],"class_list":["post-1478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-paranormalsupernatural","tag-lisa-mcmann"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Eu9f-nQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1478"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1488,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478\/revisions\/1488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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