Lena Trainor's grandmother always told her when she left home to "Never Wave Goodbye" because if you did you would never return.Lena Trainor is sending her daughter Sarah off to summer camp, and is planning on using this private time to try and put the pieces back into a failing marriage.The camp van picks up Sarah and three other children and everything seems fine - until another van comes to pick the children up. The children have been kidnapped and a ransom of $1,000,000 is demanded.The police are baffled as there are absolutely no clues to connect anyone to the kidnapping. The kidnappers, there are three involved, do not know what the others are doing. One person is used to pick up the children, another drives them to a remote wooded cabin, and the third - well you will just have to read the book.The situation gets complicated when not only the police, but the parents themselves, start looking at each other as possibly being part of the kidnapping. To make matters worse, the person who is with the children has a fatal stroke and the children are left abandoned in the woods.The police and parents are in a race to find out where these children are before it is too late. The children also must make a decision to stay put or try to work their way out of the woods.A well done mystery that grabs you from the first page and wouldn't let you go until the end. This book was AWFUL! The idea of the plot was decent enough, and that is why I picked it up. However, the writing was horrendous. I wrote better than this in 6th grade, and really, I am no writer. Other books with horrible writing (I'm talking to you, Twilight) make me cringe and want to look away, but this book took it to another level. I was grinding my teeth and yelling at the author while I read. Besides that, he left loose strings at the end -- not intentionally -- I think he just "forgot" about certain hints or plot lines he had mentioned earlier in the book. I cannot figure out how this book got published.
What do You think about Never Wave Goodbye (2010)?
Original, well written and suspenseful to the end. What a wonderful surprise of a book!
—tams
Pretty standard fare for a suspense novel, but with a few twists on the kinapping theme
—Minmin
A very compelling first novel. Look forward to reading more of Mr. Magee's work.
—Demira
