The Girl on the Run

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).