Found: The Missing, Book 1

This was an interesting book. I wanted to read (listen) to this before my son read it and I truly enjoyed it. I plan on getting the other books in the series before he gets to! Worth a listen.

I am a Sci-Fi junkie. This was an excellent read. The first chapter really propels the story. By the end of the story, I couldn't wait to pick up the next one.

Really enjoyed this book - good story line with a few twists. Can't wait to read more...

NO

YES

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SHOULD BE WARNED BEFORE YOU SELL THIS TYPE OF BOOK THAT IT IS FOR TEENAGERS ONLY.IT STUNK FOR ME.

I thought this was a pretty decent book until it all of a sudden ended. There is lots of build up then, just when it starts to get interesting it's done. It was like reading a book half way and then ripping the last half off and throwing it away. Very frustrating. Note the #1 in the subtitle, the author must have figure this was the only way she was going to get to #2.

This is the second book of this type that I have bought not knowing that it was a teen adventure. The first, The Second Ship, turned out to be a great book even though the main protagonists were about 50+ years younger than I am and I had a great time listening to it. This book was not as gripping and far less interesting.

I found the first hour or so of this book boring beyond belief with all of the concerns about teenage problems and the adopted-non adopted dynamics, but after that it became interesting enough for me to want to know what was going one and what was the story behind the adopted children. The book did finally provide that information and the story line turned out to be moderately interesting as a concept. I even finally lost my boredom with all of the teenager problems and their trouble interacting with their friends and parents. I was interested enough to want to know what was going to happen.

I had hoped that this first book in the series would be complete as it was, but that turned out to not be the case. The end of the book, which did tie up all of the loose threads as far as the story line was concerned, left me without any end to this part of the story - it was a classic cliffhanger and readers who want to know what happens to the characters will have to buy the next book. I will not do that for several reasons.

The first is that I have no emotional tie with the main characters and that is not because they are teenagers. I bought the second and the third Rho Agenda books because the characters were real to me and the story was well done. I cannot say the same here. It is not a bad book, but it is not a great one either./

The second reason is that, having read the promo for the second book, it is clear that the author either has some continuity issues between the first and second book or has changed the story line enough so that characters are not who they were supposed to be in the first book. I cannot explain further without giving away some of the story and I don't do that in reviews, so the reader will have to either take my word for it or read the first book and then the promo for the second.

The narration of the book was very well done and made reading a somewhat boring book more interesting than it otherwise would have been. On the whole, a 4 star book.

"Found" started out well with the mysterious appearance of the plane with no pilot and no crew at the unassigned gate at the airport. And the babies inside. It abruptly switched to 13 years later and two boys receive mysterious, threatening notes. I was hooked.

Then it just limped along until I wanted to scream. The plot is disorganized and very poorly rendered. The characters are alternately blindingly stupid, horribly stereotyped or just plain boring. There are parts that seem to be just starting to get interesting... and that's where the author will drop into "can I make this interesting bit into something deadly dull?"

The storyline was so poorly developed and chaotic that, when it abruptly ended with no resolution of anything at all except the clear expectation that you'll buy the next book, I felt simply ripped off. Clearly the author has taken one book and tried to make it into three books in order to sell books.

And she didn't even do it well!! She left me with no reason at all to care what happens next.

The next book I started was "Gideon the Cutpurse." Now THAT is literature for young people! I haven't even finished the first one yet and the second and third are already in my shopping cart.

This book, however, is awful.

This book is excellent for teens/preteens. The performance was much like a librarian reading to her high school group. The plot was predictable .Over all the story was OK.

This is a great idea for a series and Haddix does a great job of making it accessible for young readers. She uses a couple of key tactics to explain complex ideas that work really well. The characters and the action are believable. Audible has this book in the 8 - 10 year old category which I personally think is a little young. I've recommended it to the 12 year old in my life.