Sue Whiting (2)

The opening chapter of this book is great with the first line "I'm starting this story at the end." We find Chance the main character riding in a police car to the police station late at night. What has happened to lead her into this position? What did she do, see or know that has put her in this situation? The book then backtracks to a reality show coming to do over her mother's small house as a thank-you for all her work done with new refugee families in Wollongong. Even though there is only Chance and her mother, Chance feels part of a bigger family through her close relationship with the Sudanese family who live next door; Miss -D, Alek and Dut. and their extended family. Everything comes to a head though when one of the producers of the show remembers the fire that killed Chance's father and yet doesn't remember Chances' mother being pregnant with Chance at the time. Sparked by strange other behaviour from her mother and a lack of answers to her questions, Chance starts investigating. What is the truth?

Suspenseful novel written by the author of "Missing".… (mais)

Gut wrenching book about Mackenzie da Luca's mother who has gone missing while on a scientific study of bats in Panama. In the dead of night, her father (distraught and mentally unstable) packs up Mack from her grandmother's house and takes her to Panama to try and find the mother himself. Unfortunately, the dad gets very ill and ends up in hospital and Mack must fend for herself in a country where she knows no-one and doesn't speak the language. Fortunately she befriends a teenage boy who speaks English and she sets out to complete her father's quest despite her Aunt and Uncle having gone to Panama in he weeks immediately following her disappearance and them finding nothing.
This is a mystery - Has her mother just run away from her life in Australia? Is she in the Witness Protection program? Is she dead? And if so, then who sent the bat postcard from England to Mack?

Gripping but I didn't like the fact that the guesthouse didn't know the mum was missing...it didn't quite fit with the plot as you would have expected the Aunt and Uncle to cover every lead.… (mais)