The London Eye Mystery (2007)

Proprietario:Alex Rossi
Prestito: Cultrera

Tween/teen fiction; mystery/suspense. A boy walks on board a pod of the London Eye, then seemingly disappears into thin air, and it's up to his cousins--autistic/mathematical savant Ted and his older sister Kat to figure out what happened to him. Ted's narration is interesting and the author keeps up the suspense through the very end--there is a brief mention of the possibility of a kidnapper wanting to do "sex stuff," which is why I'd recommend this book for more mature children. ( )

Interesting to have an autistic POV, though there were a number of times it felt inconsistent. Good enough mystery. My favorite part was how the reader made Salim sound kind of like a cleaned-up Lister from Red Dwarf.

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Read Harder: Middle grade novel ( )

RGG: A middle-grade Curious Incident. Clever and likely mystery. Weather science. Britishisms may be confusing. Reading Interest: 10-13.

Just perfect for me--engaging throughout with nary a misstep (normally even my favourite book has a chapter, character, or passage I could do without, but not this one--consistently good!), and moving to boot, tears in my eyes, as it hurried toward its conclusion.

I suppose for most people it's an unusual narrator (unless you've read the similar Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time or the like), but for me Ted's thinking is closer to my way of thinking than the other members of his family, and I could relate. (I'm not to his extent--my Mom insists, like Young Sheldon, I've been tested, I'm fine--but I know I can't read people and grew up lacking what everyone else called common sense and am exceedingly literal. I learned how to behave by reading and watching tv and film (terrible ways to learn) and eventual reconciled them with observed behaviour around me, so I can pass.)

Loved it.

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve! ( )