Finn and Chloe are two smart (maybe too smart) high school juniors in a small New Jersey town. Bored and in need of something dynamic to make them stand out to college entrance officers, they hatch a deceptively simple hoax that will rocket them to the national spotlight: Chloe will disappear and after a sufficient amount of time, her devoted best friend, Finn, will miraculously find her unharmed and return Chloe to her family. But once the hoax is in place, Finn watches their families and their community start to unravel and everything spins out of control until an innocent friend is accused of Chloe’s abduction and murder and Finn realizes things will never be the same again.
When Chloe and Finn planned out all the aspects of their scheme, they didn’t take into account the impact the disappearance would have on the emotional lives of everyone around them. Finn suffers more than she thought she would as she has to watch the pain, despair, and anxiety unfold around her and not be able to stop it. Worse yet, her feelings of guilt, shame, and fear of discovery soon overwhelm her and she feels increasingly powerless over the situation she created.
Eireann Corrigan’s latest YA novel, Accomplice, is one of those books that is hard to read. As she successfully does in her other books, Corrigan captures the immediacy of the action, the fullness of the characters, and the emotional drama which leaves the reader shaken and breathless on every page. It’s agonizing to watch this prank ensnare everyone in this book and yet at no time was I able to set Accomplice down to take a break and draw a sane breath.
- Posted by Cori