When Clea falls for Cody, her disapproving father sends her to boarding school. Soon afterward, Clea mysteriously disappears, and Cody sets out to discover what happened, in this thrilling tale by the author of the Echo Falls Mystery series. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

In the latest engrossing crime novel from Abrahams (Nerve Damage), Colorado football star Cody Laredo's junior year has gotten off to a dreadful start. After his girlfriend, Clea, is sent to a boarding school across the country (triggering a fight and a breakup), he tears his ACL during a football game and quickly spirals into a depression that leads to him dropping out of school. When he learns that Clea has gone missing, he decides to travel across the country to investigate. When he gets to Vermont, Cody meets Clea's new boyfriend, encounters a friendly cop and has run-ins with locals from the town and rich kids from the boarding school. Although clues often come too easily and coincidentally to Cody-Abrahams pushes hard to explain away the flaws surrounding the pivotal piece of evidence-and the "whodunit" is hardly surprising, Abrahams tells an exciting, fast-paced story. Cody and most of the teens he encounters-both out west and in Vermont-are complex characters with believable motivations and faults, plot issues aside. Ages 12-up. (May) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr 9 Up-Set in Little Bend, CO, and North Dover, VT, Abrahams's novel follows Cody, 16, who sustains a serious knee injury that leaves him on the bench during the most important recruiting year in his high school career. With no college scholarship in sight, he drops out of school. When his rich girlfriend, Clea, is reported missing from her Vermont boarding school, he drives East to find her and endangers himself in the process. Though not as complicated as Abrahams's adult novels, Reality Check is a solid mystery reminiscent of Carol Plum-Ucci's The Body of Christopher Creed (Harcourt, 2000) or Nancy Werlin's The Killer's Cousin (Delacorte, 1998). That Cody is a country boy and a dropout both complicate and inform his detective persona; the realization that "with the exception of football" he was wasting his time in school sends him "some message about a whole different way for him to look at things, to live." It is this "whole different way" that allows Cody-a fish out of water among wealthy Dover Academy students-to solve the mystery, though not before a red herring is revealed and a surprise villain is unmasked.-Amy S. Pattee, Simmons College, Boston Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Abrahams steps away from his Echo Falls series in this compulsively readable mystery for older teens. Cody Laredo, star of his Colorado high-school football team, is crazy about Clea Watson, but her wealthy father, who disapproves of her relationship with Cody, sends her away to Vermont's Dover Academy. Cody's troubles multiply after he severely injures his knee, flounders academically, and drops out of school. Then a newspaper headline announcing that Clea has disappeared finally penetrates Cody's misery, and he heads east to join the search. The novel's mystery elements reveal Abrahams' practiced hand: the well-placed clues are a natural part of the narrative; the deductive reasoning flows from the character; and a fair but completely misleading red herring lures the reader into complacency. As the solution is gradually revealed, so is Cody's true character, and he emerges as an authentic teen awakening to his abilities. The ending is too abrupt, but the intriguing puzzle will have readers racing through the pages, and it is Cody himself whom readers will remember after the puzzle is solved.--Rutan, Lynn Copyright 2009 Booklist From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.