She Is Not Invisible
Gr 8 Up—Laureth Peak, 16, has just kidnapped her seven-year-old brother and negotiated her way through two major airports on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and is on her way to meet up with someone she's only met via email. The reason for her drastic and dangerous actions? Her author father, who is supposed to be in Switzerland on a research assignment for his esoteric novel on coincidences, is not answering her phone calls and his precious notebook is currently in the possession of a stranger in Queens, NY. The teen sets out on this quest to find her missing father, with a niggling premonition that something sinister has befallen him. However, Laureth is blind, and she needs the aid of her little brother to maneuver through the streets of New York City, fancy hotels, taxis, and subways. The coincidences that pervade the suspenseful novel border on contrivances, but Sedgwick stops just shy of that in this intricately plotted tale that would be right at home as an episode of J. J. Abrams's Lost. The protagonist's first-person narration (which includes no mention of descriptions that involve sight) is interspersed with the pages from her dad's notebook that refer to secret societies, Edgar Allan Poe, philosophy, and physics. Laureth's ability to string together connections while under duress and her sibling's inability to handle devices without circuit breaking them seem quite preternatural and add an air of otherworldliness. At times heavy-handed, this novel will have readers feeling a creepy sensation on the backs of their necks long after the last page.—Shelley Diaz, School Library Journal