McClintock, Norah. My Side.

McClintock, Norah.  My Side.  Orca  2013  110p  $9.95  ISBN 978-1-4598-0511-8  ms/hs  Realistic fiction  VG-BN   

Norah McClintock has readers on the edge with her new Orca Soundings book, My Side.  Addie is vulnerable and foolish.  When a new guy invites her to meet him in the woods, she willingly accepts.  While en route to their “date”, she is abducted by a masked marauder and forced into the basement of a building in the woods.  Terrified, she discovers that her abductors are high-school acquaintances who have targeted her.  To add insult to injury, she is filmed, and the film appears on the school’s website.  McClintock shares Addie’s feelings through first-person point of view, then switches the point of view to that of Addie’s best friend Neely.  Addie’s best friend is as involved as she can be in the entire incident.  However, Neely tells a story of manipulation at the hands of her new friends, a group of girls from the better side of town.  Neely has been equally tricked.  McClintock’s cleverness in combining the two points of view into an intriguing story of friendship and cyber-bullying is amazing.  Her resolution is unique, her theme is contemporary, and her creativity is sublime.  The book is short but sweet.  Readers won’t be able to put it down.        

Summary: Addie finds herself in a terrifying setting, alone in the woods with an attacker.  When she realizes that her attacker is a fellow high-school student, Addie suffers further humiliation upon discovering that the kidnapping was filmed and spread throughout the school by mean girls.      

Bullying-Fiction, Kidnapping-Fiction                        --Martha Squaresky