No Such Person by Caroline B. Cooney (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- No Such Person by Caroline B. Cooney
Library ed. ISBN 978-0-375-99084-7 $20.99
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-385-74291-7 $17.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-307-97952-0 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10
The peaceful summer at Miranda’s family’s cabin along the Connecticut River is disrupted when an accident almost takes the life of a water skier in front of Miranda’s eyes. To fifteen-year-old Miranda it looked nothing like an accident, though, and she’s certain the boat’s driver deliberately left the skier in the path of the oncoming barge. However, Miranda’s accomplished twenty-two-year-old sister, Lander, [End Page 17] has fallen completely for handsome Jason, the driver of the boat, so Miranda tells herself (and Lander tells her) that she misunderstood what she saw. Within a week, however, Lander is in jail, accused of the shooting death of that same water skier and of smuggling cocaine; finding that Jason is not who he claims to be, Miranda believes that his machinations are behind Lander’s situation and determines to find the truth and save her sister. Cooney sucks readers into a story like nobody else, and the book ramps up tension by shifting between the third-person view of a panicked young woman, soon revealed to be Lander in jail, and Miranda’s uneasy contemplation of her sister’s speedy enmeshment with a dubious guy. The author displays her usual adroit observations, both positive and negative, about humans and their relationships, and she credibly depicts the community’s happily insular life in the little river enclave, a life that has, in the case of Miranda’s family, been built on overstretched credit. The climax isn’t as gripping as the tautly ominous windup, but that’s inherent to the genre, and it’s not going to keep readers from relishing Miranda’s turn as an unexpected heroine.
