Children – The Argle Bargle

Title: Amy

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Publish Date: September 7th 2002

Genre: Children’s/Teen’s

Rating: 3 Stars

“Amy knows perfectly well that to go and meet – on her own – somebody who she has met in a chatroom is most definitely not sensible. But Zed sounds perfectly normal. And anyway, Amy has her escape route planned of he looks at all sinister… But Zed has something in mind that Amy could have never of guessed at.”

I picked this one up in a charity shop in someone’s shed while my mom was shopping for carnivorous plants a few weeks back. It’s one of those books that just catches your eye – its cover promising something a little bit of mystery and a little bit of danger. I guess it did live up to its cover but, overall, the plot just felt thin. There were certainly places where Hooper could have add some meat onto the book’s bones and those opportunities just aren’t something you miss out when writing about this sort of subject, especially when you’re trying to raise awareness. If a child read this, I definitely don’t think that they’d necessarily understand the gravity of the situation – there just wasn’t enough description.

I also really disliked our main character Amy. She was too obsessive over her bad friends and pretty horrible to one the girl who was friendly towards her. She just came across as snobby and rude, making it hard for me to relate or even support her and her (very bad) decisions. There’s just no need to be rude, is there?

But I did love the layout of the story. There’s nothing I like better than a book with an interesting layout so ‘Amy’ definitely caught my attention there. Each chapter was organised as a clip police interview – the main text being Amy telling her story whilst being punctuated with bits of ‘evidence’ (transcripts) that give the book a bit of a chill from the start. It added intrigue and excitement, making sure that even from the start you were hooked, waiting to find out what the plot would climax with.

Despite the lack of description I did love the overall plot. I think Hooper did do a good job in coming up with the idea behind the book, delivering an awareness of the dangerous of online communities (obviously not the book blogger one though ;-)) and how easy it is deceive and be deceived. I also think that the fact she didn’t just use what everyone would expect as an outcome as she choose one of the dangerous that doesn’t immediately come to mind when you think of meeting up with strangers (I’m not going to give the ending away).

This is a good book – short, snappy and meaningful. If there was a bit more meat on its bones, this could definitely ranked up higher on my favorite’s list.