Mercer Buddie has what he’s wanted for so long - a chance to show that he too can become a master falconer like his father and older brother. He names the newly captured bird “Flip” and, with his father and friend’s training, learns to work with Flip so that he can find prey and bring it back to Mercer, breaking only a few rules in the process. On the very morning he and his family go out to get his falcon, he meets the cute Lucy in the pet store, who thinks the mouse he’s buying is going to be a pet. You see, Lucy is a vegetarian and an active member, along with her parents, of HALT, a radical pro-animal rights group. Thus begins Mercer’s series of lies and deceptions, convincing Lucy that he wants to be a member of HALT, while training his falcon and eating cheeseburgers when at home. HALT does some pretty bad things, like destroying animal research and threatening scientists at Mercer’s mother’s university. Eventually the whole story comes out, when HALT breaks into his father’s animal rescue/falconry habitat, setting some birds free and injuring others. When the whole story comes out, Lucy has to decide between her feelings for Mercer and what her radical animal-loving parents want.

This book is for middle school readers, appealing mostly to boys. I confess that the things Mercer thought and said to his friends about Lucy were offensive - I sincerely hope all boys/men don’t think those things, and certainly don’t say them. The lying also bothered me - but the author does show how it doesn’t work out for Mercer in the end, and how he matures to make better choices. He was a more well-rounded character at the end of the book. The information about falconry was fascinating. The animal-rights angle was too radical. I know there are groups out there like this, but perhaps it could have been tempered so that option wasn’t as far-fetched.