Charlie, Presumed Dead by Anne Heltzel (review)

Aubrey and Lena were never supposed to meet—at least that appears to have been the intention of Charlie, their common, philandering boyfriend, before he crashed his parents’ private plane. But eyeing each other at the memorial service, they immediately divine the truth—they’ve been played. Lena has reason to suspect that Charlie is not dead, but she’s not forthcoming with her evidence. Aubrey seems strangely relieved that he’s gone, and she is more focused on recovering her journal, if it still exists among his possessions. Mutually resentful and mistrustful of each other, the pair nonetheless agree to trace Charlie’s last days and, if they find him alive, make him wish he wasn’t. The trek leads them from London to Mumbai to Bangkok, dodging perils and navigating deceits along the way, and slowly coming to suspect what the reader has already learned through chapters in Charlie’s increasingly eerie voice—that he’s a psychopathic manipulator pulling their strings. Heltzel skids a bit on character development, particularly Aubrey’s supposed Midwestern naïveté and Lena’s over-the-top jet-setting skills, but the author’s ability to keep readers skipping over logical quicksand is impressive. Teens shouldn’t come here looking for a happy ending or even justice delivered but for a creepy race toward a bone-wracking shudder.