Wish You Were Dead
by Todd Strasser
Rating: ☆☆
I had no idea that Strasser had a new book out, so when I saw this at Barnes & Noble last week, I had to grab it. Unfortunately, this book holds none of the originality and honesty of Strasser's best work: last year's sensational Boot Camp. However, I think most students will enjoy this book much more than I did.
My problem with the novel is the tired old suspense movie formula it seems to follow--a claim inside the dust jacket that the book is in the tradition of Duncan's I Know What You Did Last Summer is unfortunately dead-on. Todd Strasser is just better than that. He shouldn't need to be following in the footsteps of any other YA writer; instead, others should be following his lead. I always felt he was a pretty fearless writer, which is why I find it so puzzling that he would go this route.
The idea behind the story was interesting for me at first. Popular kids from a local high school slowly begin to disappear. The only clue as to their whereabouts comes through the rants of a blogger known only as "St-r-ssd." I liked how Strasser actually included the blog entries themselves. This nicely offset the traditional prose writing.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I've seen similar stories too often, and they have always bored me to death. There is really nothing original when it comes to what happens to the missing teens. The whole scenario is also quite hard to swallow. I just shook my head several times. I thought characters were only this naive in bad movies. For example, two teens have disappeared, yet the protagonist thinks it's perfectly reasonable to go places alone, like an out-of-the-way horse stable. Would teens still be out partying when two of their classmates had disappeared just days earlier? The characters seem conveniently clueless.
To be fair, I can see my students liking this book. The suspense will probably keep them on edge. Maybe this is because they haven't seen as many bad movies as I have over the years, or perhaps because they get something from this story that I completely missed. -K.L.
