The Last Good Place of Lily Odilon

Gr 8 Up—Following a late-night accident 18 months earlier at her stepfather's dental office, Lily Odilon has been suffering from memory loss. Now her memories have begun to surface, but she has vanished. Her love interest and new guy in town, Albert, becomes an immediate suspect in her disappearance. He finds himself combining efforts with Lily's skeptical sister, Olivia, to find the girl he loves, clear his name, and bring those responsible for Lily's troubling recollections to justice. In this debut suspense novel, the teens search for elusive truths about Lily's family in their small Idaho town. Readers learn long before Albert and Olivia that Lily is sexually abused by her stepfather, a prominent dentist with high connections. With a chapter structure reminiscent of Paul Fleischman's Whirligig (Holt, 1998), the novel requires readers to piece together complete pictures of the characters in three divergent story lines in order to gain a full understanding of their plight. While the multiple narrative threads may prove challenging for those readers who easily lose their way, the straightforward, sometimes simple, language of the novel will provide some clarity in comprehension. Several contrived situations and a scarcity of fully developed characters may be seen as flaws to more sophisticated readers.—Colleen S. Banick, Tomlinson Middle School, Fairfield, CT