Wake Up Missing by Kate Messner
- Method of Obtaining: I obtained my copy from the publisher.
- Published by: Walker Childrens
- Release Date: 9.10.2013
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Meet Quentin, a middle school football star from Chicago…
Sarah, an Upstate New York girls’ hockey team stand-out…
Ben, a horse lover from the Pacific Northwest…
And Cat, an artistic bird watcher from California.The four have nothing in common except for the head injuries that land them in an elite brain-science center in the Florida Everglades. It’s known as the best in the world, but as days pass, the kids begin to suspect that they are subjects in an experiment that goes far beyond treating concussions….and threatens their very identities. They’ll have to overcome their injuries – and their differences – to escape, or risk losing themselves forever.
I also recommend:
- The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
- The Wednesdays by Julie Bourbeau
I haven’t come across many middle-grade suspense books that actually held my interest, but Wake Up Missing by Kate Messner was a fun, fantastic ride that had me thinking that my middle-grade nephew would probably devour this book. As such, this review will be less about the issues I would have had should this have been an adult book and focus more on all of the elements that make it such a fun read for middle-grade kids.
One of the things I loved about this book was that it wasn’t written in “stupid” speak. In fact, at first I thought I was mistaken because Cat read in the opening chapter as a much older girl. She’s mature, has an interesting hobby, and a great relationship with her parents and I was extremely interested in how her story would unfold. Having sustained a head injury in the pursuit of her hobby, Cat is on her way to recover at a high-class facility specializing in treatment and gene therapy.
So here’s where things got a little mushy for me and I could definitely tell I was reading a book intended for a younger audience. There were a few pretty unrealistic things (only a few children at the facility, some dicey leaps as far as how Cat actually was accepted into the place, etc) but everything was based on real life science and the possibility of what our future could hold. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t super technical or filled with science-speak (or I would have been lost, I promise you). Everything was accessible, informative without being preachy, and quite interesting.
On top of it all, I really enjoyed the snapshot provided of Florida. Too often, Florida gets portrayed in books as the tourist central or miami-party type atmosphere, so it was nice reading about the swamps and the dangers there – even if it did get a bit gory at one point.
I think Wake Up Missing is the perfect book to get a reluctant reader hooked into something a little more science-fiction than the typical middle-grade book. There’s not a lot of fantasy elements, but lots of biology and brain-science-y stuff that will manage to keep any reader, science fan or not, interested.
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