Thursday, February 10, 2011

Just Jennifer

Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry (Crown, February 2011)


While Troy Chance is returning to Lake Placid on a Lake Champlain ferry she sees a bundle being thrown in the frigid lake from a ferry going in the opposite direction. Almost instinctively she realizes the bundle is a child and she dives in after it even though she is not a strong swimmer. She rescues a little boy of about five or six years old from the frigid water and finds herself fiercely attached to the boy and determined to allow no further harm to come to him. As a freelance writer she is able to make a trip to Canada where she finds the boy’s father, a wealthy businessman. Satisfied that Philippe had nothing to do with Paul’s abduction, Troy brings Paul back to his father’s house; his father has moved during the time that Paul and his mother were abducted (his mother is presumed dead) and asks Troy to stay and help Paul get acclimated to his new home as he seems as attached to Troy as she is to him. The longer Troy stays with Philippe and Paul, the more attached she grows to both of them and the deeper she gets into the mystery of what happened to Paul and his mother; before long she finds herself chasing kidnappers and murderers back to Vermont, all the while missing what is write before her. Though the plot is interesting, the pacing is a little slow and the tension never quite builds, the story lacking the suspense it could have in a more seasoned writer’s hands.

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