Library Challenge #4: Behind the Curtain

Title: Behind the Curtain

Author: Peter Abrahams

Series: Echo Falls #2

Format: Hardcover

Release Date: April 25, 2006

Genre(s): YA, Mystery

Rating:     F

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Summary

Things are amiss at 99 Maple Lane. Ingrid's dad's job is in jeopardy and her brother, Ty, is getting buff—really buff—but his moodiness is making Ingrid start to wonder . . . Meanwhile, Ingrid's beloved soccer coach is replaced by an icy newcomer who seems a little too savvy to be in it for the postgame pizza. True to her hero, Sherlock Holmes, Ingrid begins fishing around to find out who's really pulling the strings in Echo Falls. But one morning, while en route to the dreaded MathFest, Ingrid is kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a car. Even if she escapes, will anyone believe her story?

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Review

Plot: The plot is a very basic YA mystery. Something doesn't seem right and Ingrid needs to get to the bottom of it. However, for being a detective, it seemed like she wasn't very good at picking up the clues. There were so many times the plot line would just drag on because she couldn't figure something out. The main part of reading mystery is to keep me on my toes and excited about what's going to happen next! That wasn't really the case with this book. The pacing was a bit slow and I didn't really cared about what happened next.

Character: I think part of the reason I disliked this book so much was really just because I couldn't connect to the main character, Ingrid. It could be because of how young she was, but I don't think that's it. I've read many books where the characters were much younger than me and I could still enjoy it. There is a similar mystery series with a girl named Gilda Joyce, and I could still enjoy those books to this day. I think that the age of a character shouldn't make the entire novel impossible to read. I just felt like for someone that's supposed to be the leading detective lady, she wasn't very smart and just annoyed me most of the time.

Cover: Even the cover of the book left me worried. Not much to say, however, it did look like a mystery book from the outside which was kind of cool. I like being able to pick up a book and say the cover looks like the book reads.

Closing Thoughts: I give this book an F and I feel very bad to do so. The problem is it was sooooo boring! And to be fair, the characters are really young and so it was hard to connect to them. But I barely even remember finishing this because this was a book I was solely finishing for the challenge. I didn't care about the characters or the plot and it was just very blah to me. I thought that maybe it was the author, but the next book I read (Bullet Point) was actually pretty good! I don't know if he was directing these two books towards different audiences or he just wrote much better in the later one, but I definitely did not enjoy Behind The Curtain, I'm sorry to say. To be fair, I never read the first in the series because I didn't realize it was part of a series. But I don't think reading the first would have made me enjoy this any more. You could possibly enjoy this if you are a younger reader, but I don't really recommend. 

Where to find Peter Abrahams:

Website l Goodreads l 

Sweet Daydreams,

Brooke