Killing Rachel

Gr 9 Up—Rose Smith, 17, is the type of girl who works hard to earn good grades and doesn't take too much for granted. It is still five years since her mother, a detective, went missing, along with "stepbrother" Joshua's father. Rose is too skeptical to get drawn in to Joshua's amateur sleuthing, but when Rachel, once Rose's close friend, starts sending her letters and then drowns in a lake at the Mary Linton School in the English countryside, Rose feels compelled to return and ask questions. Rachel was as unlikable as Rose is solid. She had some disturbing habits, such as a tendency to lie one minute and ask forgiveness the next. Cassidy does a fine job of balancing Rachel's reports of seeing the ghost of another girl who died with the everyday things experienced but not seen, and Rose's sense that what she's starting to feel for Joshua may not be appropriate. The novel's excellent plot turns on whether or not the truth should come out not only when people we love are concerned, but also when people we don't much like at all are victims.—Georgia Christgau, Middle College High School, Long Island City, NY