Amazon.com Review
The story began when teenage Janie Johnson recognized her younger self as
The Face on the Milk Carton. It continued when she tried to fit in with her birth family, leaving her "real" parents grieving about
Whatever Happened to Janie. The complicated saga took a vicious turn when Janie's boyfriend Reeve betrayed her, broadcasting her troubles as
The Voice on the Radio. Finally, we are provided with a suspenseful, satisfying conclusion as Caroline B. Cooney reveals
What Janie Found.
The discovery that her adoptive father has been secretly supporting Janie's kidnapper, Hannah, fills Janie with anger and loathing. True, Hannah is his daughter, but long ago she abandoned her parents for a cult, coming back only for a few hours to leave a 3-year-old child with them she claimed was their granddaughter. Janie grew up thinking they were her parents--until that day when her own face looked back at her from the milk carton. Now her father lies unconscious in the hospital, and Janie has found an address in his files that will lead her to the woman who decimated two families. With the reluctant help of Reeve and her brother Brian, Janie sets out to find the enigmatic Hannah and face her down with questions, even though she knows the answers may destroy them all.
Caroline Cooney is a master of the psychological page-turner, and here she pulls together all the threads of this emotionally complex story for a rousing finale to her most popular series. (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell
From Publishers Weekly
Fans of the series may be reluctant to say good-bye to Janie Johnson, the unwitting kidnap victim whose efforts to deal with the trauma of her belated discovery of the circumstances surrounding her kidnapping have filled three riveting novels (beginning with The Face on the Milk Carton). Chances are they'll snap up this installment, which the publisher bills as the conclusion. Here Janie's "kidnap father," Frank Johnson, is gravely ill, and Janie, managing the accounting books while Mr. Johnson is in the hospital, discovers that all along he has been sending money to his birth daughter, HannahAJanie's kidnapper. Janie feels betrayed, and so might the audience, given that an infallible character had found proof of Hannah's death in the preceding installment, The Voice on the Radio. After much gnashing of teeth and lengthy speculations by the major characters (Janie, boy-next-door Reeve and Janie's real brother Brian), they end up going to Colorado, where Hannah lives, because Janie wants to confront her. Conveniently, Janie and Brian's older brother attends college there and has only recently learned that his girlfriend happens to be the daughter of a retired FBI agent. Fortunately, the conflicts roil as hotly as the coincidences. While this novel is the weakest in the sequence, Cooney remains a master of the gossipy, insider-style narration, and she never tips her hand. The answer to "what Janie found" will keep readers guessing all the way to the end. Ages 12-up. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
