Wake Up Missing

Gr 6–9—Cat Grayson hopes that checking into the International Center for Advanced Neurology, a prestigious clinic in an isolated section of the Florida Everglades, will help fix the headaches and memory issues that have plagued her since she suffered a concussion. Her first sign that something is amiss, though, is that the resortlike clinic houses only five other teenage patients. After overhearing a suspicious conversation and snooping through some files, Cat and her new friends discover that I-CAN's doctors are secretly using gene therapies to turn teenagers into clones of famous scientists, possibly for nefarious purposes. A series of narrow getaways ensues as the group attempts to flee to safety. The simple language and high-interest plot, reminiscent of Lois Duncan's Down a Dark Hall (Little, Brown, 1974), make this book accessible to reluctant or hi/lo readers. However, the pacing is too slow for a thriller and the characters act older than their stated years (12 to 14). Medical inaccuracies are distracting-traumatic brain injuries are as unlikely to be cured in a week as patients' charts are to be easily found and understood-and the kids' investigations rely too much on documents that just happen to be left visible on office computers. An author's note attempts to explain the underlying science, but long URLs are sloppily presented. Supplement this title with more sophisticated YA biomedical thrillers like Nancy Werlin's Double Helix (Peniguin, 2004) or Lydia Kang's Control (Dial, 2013).—Jill Ratzan, I. L. Peretz Community Jewish School, Somerset, NJ