From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up—Frustrated by her parents' divorce two years earlier, 15-year-old Victoria convinces her mother to let her travel from Connecticut to stay in New York with her father for the summer. She witnesses a teen speaking harshly to her toddler son and sees her leave him in the train's bathroom. Victoria watches as the young woman and a man argue on the platform. Before she knows it, Victoria has the toddler in her possession and is barreling past her stop. She begins with the best of intentions to protect the child from an abusive situation, but, without much thought, she takes the boy, whom she calls Wills, on a train ride to Georgia. Victoria finds a large stash of money, hastily stuffed in her backpack by the boy's mother, and begins to receive threatening calls on her cell phone from the man on the platform and worried calls from her father and various police agencies. Victoria must find a way for Wills to be safe and believes that staying on the lam is the best solution. DeKeyser accurately describes the thought process that Victoria goes through as she comes to the realization of what she's done. While at the heart of her choices is her anger over her parents' divorce, the author does not oversimplify the situation. Teens are sure to find this an interesting read.—
Sarah Krygier, Solano County Library, Fairfield, CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Wrestling with feelings of betrayal in the wake of her parents’ divorce, a teenager, convinced she is a rescuer, kidnaps a roughly handled two-year-old in this flawed but thought-provoking first novel. Mulling over broken promises as she rides the train into New York to visit her father, bitter Victoria sees a young mother leave her bruised child in the bathroom and step out onto the platform to meet a scary-looking dude. The train pulls out, and Victoria finds herself traveling with a lad she dubs William, struggling to care for him and vowing that he won’t fall between society’s cracks. Then Victoria discovers a wad of money—drug money—slipped between her backpack by the boy’s mom, and learns she’s being sought not only by her parents and the police but by others as well. The expected suspenseful chase never materializes. DeKeyser focuses, instead, on Victoria’s hard-fought inner battles. Consequently, rather than facing physical danger, she comes round to realize that, first, she’ll have to go back to face the music, and, second, that it’s naive to think that promises can always be kept. Readers expecting a thriller will be disappointed, but introspective tweeners will find plenty to chew on. Grades 5-8. --John Peters
