Autumn 2005 Review:

        This book is about a girl, Winnie, who has a perfect life... she is popular, has lots of friends, and has great parents.  She has a nice house, and gets good grades.  Until one day, her parents unexpectedly tell her that they have to move.  She knows her parents aren't telling her something, but she doesn't ask questions.  When she gets to her new "neighborhood," she finds out she is living on the grounds of a mental hospital.  Her life gets more complicated as she tries to cope with her new neighborhood, new friends, and a new school.  On top of that, she misses her old friends, and finds mysterious tunnels in her basement.  And she is still bugging her parents about why they had to move in the first place.  Will she try to forget about it and go on with her life, or will her perfect world fall apart when she finds out the surprising truth about why she had to move?  Read the book and find out.

        I think this is a great and well written book.  It is very realistic and believable, and there are no choppy or little kid sentences.  I would recommend this book mostly to middle school students, and maybe freshman students.  There are a lot of realistic factors in this book that actually happen to a lot of kids around this age.  It deals with issues like friends, fighting with your parents, and moving far away and leaving all your friends behind.  The character in this book has to face issues with all of these things, and this book lets teenagers
know that everyone deals with these kind of things.  The only thing that I didn't like was that there wasn't a lot of action in this book, and at a few parts it is a bit boring.  But altogether I thought this book was very well-written.

~ Lindsay Basile, Grade 8, Boardman Center Middle School
 

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