Janie Face to Face by Caroline B. Cooney (review)

Though it’s been over twenty years since The Face on the Milk Carton (BCCB 2/90) chronicled fifteen-year-old Janie Johnson’s discovery of her history as a kidnapped child, time moves slowly in the world of fiction, and Janie, in her seventh and supposedly final book, is here only just going to college, where she’s determined to distance herself from the lurid story of her past. She seems to be managing it, deftly juggling her birth family and her Johnson parents and finding a new romance with a young man removed from the whole saga. When it turns out that her new flame is actually a paid researcher for a book on Janie’s story, though, she’s shocked out of her denial, and she decides to reaffirm what’s important to her by reconnecting with (and getting engaged to) her high school boyfriend, Reeve—but does the past harbor one more sinister blow for Janie? Cooney is a master of potboilers, but the story is mostly just reheated at this point: the back-and-forth of Janie’s emotions about her families and Reeve just recapitulates previous go-rounds, and her speedy decisions to marry Reeve and embrace her birth name seem like just another spin of the revolving door rather than any emotionally stable conclusion. The plot of Janie’s kidnapper’s renewed interest in her is more energetic, but the kidnapper’s portrayal is one of flat villainy that’s a stark contrast to the complexity of the rest of the characters. Those individual sketches of the ensemble members, so much Cooney’s hallmark, remain interesting here, but ultimately Janie herself seems to be just flotsam in the plot currents rather than an evolving character. While sheer momentum will likely propel Milk Carton fans to this title, Janie may finally be past her sell-by date.