Customer Reviews

Undercurrents

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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Undercurrents




Why does your stepmother, Crystal, insist on wearing a hat that covers her face, a scarf that covers her hair and sunglasses in public? While on a family vacation at Crystals Aunt Edna's house, that she inherited, why doesn't she want anything to do with the house? How come Crystal dyes her hair the color of mud, even though she didn't want to? Why won't Crystal let Nikki, who is fourteen, go to her new job typing a manuscript at the Gyasi's, (the neighbors) house, even though Nikki's dad said she could? This is what Nikki is trying to find out in, this mysterious book by Willo Davis Roberts, Undercurrents.
In this book, Undercurrents, Nikki's mom dies after being sick for a year, and her dad comes home, only eight months after his wife dies and says he's engaged! Nikki, her older sister Bonnie and her younger brother Sam are really surprised, and at least Nikki was pretty angry. I think anybody would be mad and upset if you've had two different moms in less than a year!
The events in this book you mainly learn about Nikki's family vacation, that's not so normal or peaceful. I thought vacations on a beach would be awesome, I guess it would if Nikki's mom was still alive and with them, but now there's Crystal and it's changing everything. Nikki is starting to get alarmed from waking up from Crystal screaming her head off from her nightmares, what's making Crystal so jumpy?
In Undercurrents, Nikki's dad receives an urgent message and has to go home. Crystal dyes her hair mud brown and she won't let Nikki go to her new job next door. What's next? Nikki and Crystal definitely don't know, but they find out after they become a team and learn to get along. After they've become a team they figure out that someone living in the house next door is a murderer!
Willo Davis Robert's theme is most likely mystery or suspense. The whole mood of Undercurrents is kind of spooky; it's spooky in Scared Stiff too, also by Willo Davis Roberts. There is a lot of thrilling suspense when Nikki is trying to figure out why Crystal is acting so strange without her knowing. There are a lot of cliffhangers after every chapter when it just leaves you hanging, asking yourself tons of questions that heart your head!
If you're into mysteries and spookiness, you'll definitely want to read this awesome book! If you get freaked out easily or don't like realistic fiction then you might want to pick up another book while at the library. Even if you haven't like realistic fiction in the past, you should definitely want to try it out again by reading Undercurrents!

Undercurrents by Willo Davis Roberts is about a girl named Nicki who just lost her mother to cancer. Her dad remarries a paranoid woman much younger than him who hardly ever talks or comes out of her room. When Nicki's stepmother, Crystal, inherits a beach house from an aunt, they decide to spend the summer there.

Crystal doesn't want to go but won't say why. Nicki's father insists that they go and when they arrive at the house Nicki meets a boy named Julian at the grocery store. Their house is the nearest to Nicki's on the beach. His father offers her a job to type out a manuscript he wrote because he can't use a computer.

When Nicki's father is unexpectedly called back home and Crystal won't drive her to her new job, Nicki sneaks out and is overwhelmed by a sense a foreboding as soon as she enters Julian's old Victorian house.

The cover of my copy of the book is different than the one here from Amazon and I like mine better. However, this one looks cool, too. I couldn't put this book down because it was so intense and mysterious. The climax of the story was unexpected and exciting. This is the first Willo Davis Roberts book I've read but I want to read more.

3 Book Bees
Originally posted at[...]

Nikki, Bonnie, Sam, and Jeremy's mom past away 6 months ago and already their dad has gotten remarried to a nice, shy young women named Crystal. Crystal is not use to having to cook, clean, and take care of three kids since Bonnie the oldest child went off to collage . But things start to go wrong after the family returns to the house that Crystal grew up in and then inherted it from here dear Aunt Edna. After getting there Jeff their dad has to leave on busniss in Seattle and leaves Crystal to take care of the kids. Then the secerts start to emerage. Crystal starts to have terrible nightmares and wakes Nikki from her sleep. It just sop happenes that Crystals reasons for all the disgues is because when she was a child, she awoke to see the her parents had been mudered , the knife still in the middle of the room. But the worse was yet to come, Nikki had taken a job fo a man named Mr. Gyasis and he was Crystal's uncle and Mr. Gyasis had a little brother named Cecil B. Gyasis. Nikki had to put all the pieces of the puzzle tyogether The B. in his named stood for Bruce. Bruce was the man who worked for the Gyasis family and he was the one who had killed Crystal mom and dad the one terrrible night and that same man was now on the loose. But oe night the power went out and a storm was in rage and lightning hit the Gyasis tower on their house and it was now up to them to save the family and the house before it was to late.

There is a girl named Nikki. She Has a sister named Bonnie and a Brother named Sam. Nikki's mother just died and her dad just got married to a new woman named Crystal. She is always really quiet and Nikki thinks she is hiding something. Later she gets a letter that she has inherited her aunt's beachouse that is right by the ocean. Her dad really wants to go but Crystal acts like she is afraid to go, but they go anyway. When they get there Crystal starts acting funny and won't go out without a huge hat and scarf. One day when Nikki is at the store with her dad a man named Mr. Gysasi offers her a job typing a book he wrote. He just happened to live next to their beachhouse.At his house there is a strange man that is always watching Nikki because he knows that she lives next door. One day Nikki's dad had to go home for something. Crystal then tells Nikki about what happened in that house when she was a little girl. A strange man with a bad temper named Bruce came to their house one night and killed everyone and Crystal turned him in. Bruce had killed her mother and father. Nikki tells Crystal that he is at the Gysasi house, and then they get really scared. That night Crystal told her that it was Bruce that killed everyone.

I started reading this book with low expectations. Although Willo Davis Roberts was one of my favorite authors when I was in Elementary and Middle School, I found that some of her newer books seemed to all have the same plot lines. When I saw this book on the library shelf, I picked it up to see it that was still the case. It wasn't.

The first few chapters drag on, but about a quarter of the way through, the plot picks up the pace. New characters are introduced, and as they are developed, the reader is more and more absorbed into the book. The plot is guessable but not predictable and the climax is not the cliche I thought it would be. I am several years older than the target range, and still enjoyed it immensely.

The only fault I found with this book was the author's writing style- something about it constantly annoyed me. It was not enough to merit knocking a star off the rating, though. I think that anyone under the age of twelve or so will have no problem with it.

Undercurrents connects me with an unordinary family. When I read this book, I thought that Nikki and Crystal had a special relationship that no other step-mom and step-daughter have. Their relationship is very unique. This book also keeps you guessing, making predictions and then at the end of the book it takes a huge turn at the end. I think this book is definatly a girl book. At first it was boring but give it until about page 75.It gets way better at the end,TRUST ME!

Sincerely,
Nikki

Willo Davis Roberts' Undercurrents tells of a family recovering from a mother's death, when the father announces remarriage to a woman only slightly older than his daughters. Nikki is not only troubled by her father's sudden marriage; she finds her new young stepmother's behavior hides a deeper mystery that her father doesn't seem to sense: a puzzle which will bring them all into danger. Excellent tension throughout to the unexpected conclusion.

Underurrents,
This story is about a girl named Nickie and her family. One day they were
walking in the mountans in a small city in Europe.And just as they were
walking their mom fell, and later go sick . soon after she died,their dad
brought home a new wife,her name was crystal.Nickie felt realy confused
about the hole thing,and wanted to know why her dad didn`t love her mom
anymore.Nickie`s sister Bonnie applied to go to a University and got in.
Nickie tryed her hardest to keep her sister from leaving,but it didnt stop
her.Soon after she left Crystal moved in,and Nickie kinda felt sorry for
her because her dad pushed Crystal around alot.Little by little Nickie
started to like her stepmother and getting use to her ways.Crystal`s
great aunt died and left her a house on the beach.Nickie`s father was
looking forward to getting the house,But this made Crystal uneasy.Nickie`s
father was plaining a trip up their to check it out.Nickie was very
intrested in why Crystal didn`t want to go,Nickie thought,maybe something
bad happend to her their.Who knows your just going to have to read it for
yourself.I RECOMMEND YOU DO!!