Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | TEEN FICTION ABR | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
QB of the varsity football team. Passing grades in all his classes. Dating the hottest--and smartest--girl at school. Summer job paying more than minimum wage. Things in Cody's world seem to be going pretty well. Until, that is, his girlfriend, Clea, is sent off to boarding school across the country, and a torn ACL ends his high school football career. But bad things come in threes--or in Cody's case, sixes and twelves--and the worst is yet to come. While limping through town one day, Cody sees a newspaper heading: "Local Girl Missing." Clea, now his ex, has disappeared from her boarding school in Vermont, and the only clue is a letter she sent to Cody the morning of her disappearance. With that as his guide, Cody sets out to find out what happened. Once in Vermont, he unearths the town's secrets--and finds out that football isn't the only thing he's good at.
Reality Check is another edge-of-your-seat suspense novel by the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author of Down the Rabbit Hole.
Author Notes
Peter Abrahams was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 28, 1947. His works include Lights Out, The Fan, Crying Wolf, and Oblivion. He also writes the Echo Falls Mysteries Series for younger readers. He was the winner of the 2010 Edgar Award, Best Young Adult Mystery for Reality Check. In addition, he writes the Chet and Bernie Mystery Series under the pseudonym Spencer Quinn.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In the latest engrossing crime novel from Abrahams (Nerve Damage), Colorado football star Cody Laredo's junior year has gotten off to a dreadful start. After his girlfriend, Clea, is sent to a boarding school across the country (triggering a fight and a breakup), he tears his ACL during a football game and quickly spirals into a depression that leads to him dropping out of school. When he learns that Clea has gone missing, he decides to travel across the country to investigate. When he gets to Vermont, Cody meets Clea's new boyfriend, encounters a friendly cop and has run-ins with locals from the town and rich kids from the boarding school. Although clues often come too easily and coincidentally to Cody-Abrahams pushes hard to explain away the flaws surrounding the pivotal piece of evidence-and the "whodunit" is hardly surprising, Abrahams tells an exciting, fast-paced story. Cody and most of the teens he encounters-both out west and in Vermont-are complex characters with believable motivations and faults, plot issues aside. Ages 12-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
His promising football career kaput after a knee injury, sixteen-year-old Cody drops out of high school. After learning of ex-girlfriend Clea's disappearance from her elite Vermont boarding school, Cody sets off to investigate. Danger looms as he interacts with locals and rich boarding-school kids and uncovers secrets. Abrahams has crafted a suspenseful mystery with well-drawn characters. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Abrahams steps away from his Echo Falls series in this compulsively readable mystery for older teens. Cody Laredo, star of his Colorado high-school football team, is crazy about Clea Watson, but her wealthy father, who disapproves of her relationship with Cody, sends her away to Vermont's Dover Academy. Cody's troubles multiply after he severely injures his knee, flounders academically, and drops out of school. Then a newspaper headline announcing that Clea has disappeared finally penetrates Cody's misery, and he heads east to join the search. The novel's mystery elements reveal Abrahams' practiced hand: the well-placed clues are a natural part of the narrative; the deductive reasoning flows from the character; and a fair but completely misleading red herring lures the reader into complacency. As the solution is gradually revealed, so is Cody's true character, and he emerges as an authentic teen awakening to his abilities. The ending is too abrupt, but the intriguing puzzle will have readers racing through the pages, and it is Cody himself whom readers will remember after the puzzle is solved.--Rutan, Lynn Copyright 2009 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Cody's life is going really well in Colorado. He does well in school, he's the star quarterback on the football team, he makes good money at his part-time job, and he has a beautiful girlfriend named Clea. When Clea's father suddenly ships her off to boarding school in Vermont and Cody suffers a torn ACL and can't play football, he becomes depressed and drops out of school. When he learns that Clea has vanished while horseback riding in the woods near her school, finding his girlfriend gives Cody's life a new purpose. Peter Abrahams's well-crafted mystery (HarperTeen, 2009) will engage listeners. He has created real characters and captures in vivid detail not only their secrets, dreams, and fears but also small-town life. James Colby's cadence and style are a perfect match for Cody's characters. Listeners will be drawn along on a twisting and shadowy path to the novel's conclusion.-Genevieve Gallagher, Charlottesville High School, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
After his adored ex-girlfriend Clea disappears from her ritzy Vermont boarding school, Codya working-class boy who, after a devastating knee injury, went from high-school football star to high-school dropouttravels to Vermont to find her, and becomes embroiled in a dangerous mystery. Cody may be from the wrong side of the tracks and have limited scholastic ability, but he possesses love, loyalty and his own kind of dogged smarts. The setup feels unnecessarily protracted, but once Cody arrives in Vermont, the thriller/mystery angle kicks in and the material becomes much more absorbing. After a series of nicely plotted twists and subterfuges, Cody ends up working at the Dover Academy, where he meets Clea's classmates, some of the school's staff and various locals, who may or may not have had a role in her disappearance. The climax is unexpected and not enormously credible, but it doesn't matter, because by that point readers will be frantically turning pages and fully invested in Abrahams's message of true love conquering all obstacles. (Mystery. 12 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Reality Check Chapter One Except for football Fridays, Cody Laredo's favorite day of the school year was always the last. Now, May 30, final day of his sophomore year at County High, he sat in the back row of homeroom, waiting for the teacher--a sub he'd never seen before--to hand out the report cards. As long as there were no Fs--even one would make him ineligible for football in the fall, meaning summer school, an impossibility because he had to work--Cody didn't care what was in the report card. He just wanted out. "One more thing," the sub was saying. "The principal sent this announcement." The sub unfolded a sheet of paper, stuck a pair of glasses on the tip of his nose. "'County High wishes everyone a safe summer. Please remember . . ." And then came blah blah blah about alcohol and drugs, tuned out by some mechanism in Cody's brain, overloaded from having heard the same thing too many times. The sub thumbed through the report cards, called out names in alphabetical order, mispronouncing several. Cody was the only L. A minute or two later he was outside, crossing the student parking lot, warm sun shining down and the sky big and blue. Somewhere close by a horse neighed. His car--a ten-year-old beater with 137,432 miles on the odometer, an odometer disconnected by the previous owner, one of his dad's drinking buddies--sat at the back of the lot, open prairie behind it and Coach Huff leaning against the fender. "Hey, coach," said Cody. "Close shave, son," said Coach Huff. "Huh?" "Ain't opened your report yet?" Cody shook his head. The coach already knew his grades? What was with that? "Waitin' for what, exackly?" said Coach Huff, a tall guy with a huge upper body and stick legs, varsity football coach and also teacher of health and remedial English. "Sign from above?" Cody slit open the envelope with his fingernail, slid out the report card. U.S. History--C-; Algebra 1--C-; Biology--D; English--D-; Shop--B. D minus: close shave, no doubt about it. He looked up, feeling pretty good. "Good thing Miz Brennan's a football fan," the coach said. "She is?" Ms. Brennan was the English teacher, bestower of the D minus. Cody actually liked her, especially when she forgot all about whatever the lesson was and started reciting poetry, right from memory, something she did maybe once every two weeks or so. Somehow Ms. Brennan, an old lady with twisted arthritic fingers and a scratchy voice, had all this poetry in her head. Poetry in the textbook was a complete mystery to Cody, but in a way he couldn't explain, the murkiness all cleared up during Ms. Brennan's recitations, or at least he thought it did. Like: Screw your courage to the sticking-place / And we'll not fail. Cody was pretty sure he got that one, just from how she'd spoken the words, made his mind picture courage fastened deep to something that would never break, like a huge boulder. But he'd never seen Ms. Brennan at a football game. "Either that," said Coach Huff, "or we're lookin' at a legit D minus. That the story? It's legit?" Cody didn't know what to say, felt his face turning red. "Just razzin' you, son. Nothin' wrong with your football IQ, that's for sure. We're all countin' on you in the fall." He pushed away from the car. The shocks squeaked and the whole body rose an inch or two. "Stay in shape this summer." "I will," Cody said, thinking: Is there something wrong with my other IQ? Does Coach Huff think I'm dumb? The coach got a squinty look in his eye. "Workin' with your dad?" "Maybe," Cody said. His dad did landscaping in the summer. Landscaping wasn't bad, and Cody loved being outdoors, but he was hoping to find some other job, almost anything. "Just remember--landscapin' don't replace liftin', so hit the gym." "Okay." "Upper body's important--put some zip on the ball." "Why, coach? We never throw." Coach Huff gave Cody a long look, then laughed, a single eruption of sound, close to a bark. "Sense of humor--I like that," he said. "Just remember there's a time and place for everything." Coach Huff gave Cody a pat on the shoulder, started walking away. He met Clea Weston coming from the other direction, report card in hand, and nodded to her, but she didn't seem to notice. Her eyes were on Cody. The sun lit golden sparkles in her hair, and Cody thought: The whole summer ahead of us! And what did he have at this very moment? A full tank of gas. "Let's ride out to Black Rocks," he said. Black Rocks was an abandoned quarry near the bend in the river, the best swimming for miles around. "I got a B in calc," Clea said. "Wow," said Cody. There were two kids taking calc in the whole school, Clea--a sophomore like Cody--and some brain in the senior class. No one thought of Clea as a brain. She was just good at everything: striker on the varsity soccer team, class president, assistant editor of the lit mag; and the most beautiful girl in the school--in the whole state, in Cody's opinion. But a real person, as he well knew, capable of annoyance, for example. When Clea got annoyed, her right eyebrow did this little fluttering thing, like now. "Wow?" she said. "Yeah," he said. He himself wouldn't ever get as far as calc, not close. "Pretty awesome." She shook her head. "I've never had a B." For a second or two, Cody didn't quite get her meaning; he'd scored very few Bs himself. Then it hit him. "All As, every time?" She nodded. "You never told me." Reality Check . Copyright © by Peter Abrahams. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Reality Check by Peter Abrahams All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.