TITLE: Inside the Shadow City
Book 1 in the Kiki Strike series
AUTHOR: Kirsten Miller
PUBLISHED: 2006
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: adventure, mystery
SHORT PREMISE: a group of girls find a bunch of tunnels under New York City.
MY REVIEW: This book follows Ananka a girl who thinks her life is boring until there's a sinkhole near her house. Then a new student named Kiki Strike shows up with a proposition to explore the tunnels she discovered. They recruit a group of rag tag girls for the task but it becomes clear that Kiki has another purpose for the tunnels then what she said and just who is Kiki anyway?
Surface wise, Kiki is a okay book. It's entertaining, there's a nice girl power message, I've certainly read worse writing, and it was nice having girls care about something other then boys and use their brains. That was all good. But when you look closely at the book, problems emerge. The writer tells and doesn't show. All the characters are two-dimensional and only act according to their stereotype role (ghetto girl is of course a theif, asian girl is of course wicked smart blah, blah) and wow, are these names ridiculous or what? It was also very predictable and was anyone really surprised when the mean girl in the book turned out to be the bad guy?
So it's not the worst book in the world. But still, I was expecting better. It's a nice change of pace for those tired of the love triangles/vampires/werewolves etc. though.
WHO SHOULD READ: you want something that isn't romance
MY RATING: Three out of Five tunnels with a dead end
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