This is the weakest book in the series so far, as it focuses on Reeve's college experience of skipping class and putting Janie's deepest secrets and ugliest thoughts out live on the radio. As a boyfriend he just keeps getting worse, and as a character he has no real redeeming qualities. Other than his physical appearance, we don't even know why Janie likes him so much. Yes, he was physically there when she was in need of a friend, but the reader knows that while he was holding her and making sympathetic noises, he was really wishing she'd just shut up and take her clothes off already.(view spoiler)[But she didn't, so he stripped her naked for an unseen audience instead and excused it by saying he'd never used any last names. Their breakup is ugly and difficult to witness, but I was thinking FINALLY the entire time. Finally, Janie is free to worry about herself and her parents and not where Reeve is or what he wants from her. Except that's not true. Janie very plainly tells him to leave her alone--no phone calls, no visits, tell the parents he met someone else so that they don't have to be hurt by the enormity of his betrayal, or worry about long lost Hannah hearing the story and showing up.Of course all of these things fail. Hannah, or someone pretending to be her, has already called the station, and Reeve hung up on her, erased the tape, and told no one. Janie herself makes the decision to tell one set of parents because she can't carry the awful burden herself, but it's not the parents who live next door to Reeve. This allows Reeve to, as fucking always, ignore what Janie wants, what she needs, and call her incessantly to insist that she accept his apology. No matter how many times she hangs up on him, he just calls right back. And comes over to her house, forcing her to be friendly when she wants to kill him. The saddest part of this is that Reeve, in a rare moment of self-awareness, refers to what he did talking about Janie on the air as rape. Yet he's incapable of seeing that by forcing himself on her afterwards, when she's made it so clear that just the sight of him in physically painful, he's not expressing sorrow, he's continuing the violation. This is a book about families, all the different shapes they can take and how hard they are to hold together, and in the middle of all these cautious people carefully trying to be kind, is useless bumbling unrelated Reeve, shoving his ego everywhere that he can't shove his dong, mind-fucking everyone in his endless quest to be the center of attention.I sincerely hope the series ends with Janie grown up enough to cut him out for good. Even if he manages to grow and mature, nothing is going to change the past where he pimped her like a whore to all of Boston in exchange for popularity in his dorm. I'm pretty sure if Janie lets that slide I'll never forgive her. (hide spoiler)]
I must've read "The Face on the Milk Carton" and "Whatever Happened to Janie?" 50 times each (or more) in my childhood. I've known for several years now that there are three additional books in the series, but I've never read them -- until now.I picked this up because I needed a book that I knew would utterly sweep me into its pages, and that's what I got with this. Cooney is a champion at both plot and voice, and it's not just her on-the-edge-of-your-seat storytelling that kept me turning the pages -- it's her writing style, too. There's something about her prose that sucks me in, not unlike the writing style of Stephen King; she paints vivid portraits with really neat metaphors, to the point wherein my Inner Author was trying to take note of each descriptive turn of phrase and study how she puts them together for my own future writing reference.The plot of the book dealt more with emotional fallout, rather than being a straight-up, breakneck-plotting thriller (although I wonder if that heart-stopping moment in the middle of the story might come back to haunt the Johnsons and Springs in future installments). This was fine with me, especially as something really wonderful happened to the main character this time round.Much of the first two Janie Johnson books were about things happening _to_ Janie (as evidenced right in the title of the second book). She's not a passive character, exactly -- she's forced into too many terrible choices, which she freely makes, to be thought of as passive -- but her story has been very much a case of things that are happening to her that she has to react to, as opposed to choices she's making leading to new situations. So it was a big deal to me that, here, Janie Johnson grows up. She's _active_ in this one, and you actually get to watch her mature. Even more wonderfully, she matures by discovering the immaturity of her boyfriend, a guy who cares for her desperately but who Janie has idealized because of his strength. Finding out that he's as weak as anyone, and that she must rely on her own strength (instead of his) is *beautifully* handled. A+, Cooney. I can't wait to read the next one.
What do You think about The Voice On The Radio (1998)?
The Voice on the Radio is the third book in the Janie Johnson series; beware spoilers for the first two below, but I do promise no spoilers for this one.It's been a little more than a year since Janie found her own picture on the milk carton, and life is finally settling into a slightly less chaotic pattern. She still lives with the Johnsons, but she regularly visits the Springs, and some of the Spring siblings visit her. Janie's life is alright, but she misses Reeve terribly. He's gone off to college in Boston, where he takes a job working at the local college radio station. One night he finds himself with a talk radio time slot, and an hour to kill. Before he knows it, he's telling Janie's story to fill the time.I'd venture to say that The Voice on the Radio is almost more Reeve's story than Janie's, which kind of breaks up what could become a rather self-centered series. This book also allows the reader to get a feel for the story from Reeve's point of view. (The Face on the Milk Carton is from Janie's point of view.) We get to see how the kidnapping affected a very wide circle of people, even beyond the Johnsons and Springs. Reeve was the perfect supportive boyfriend through it all, and that's emphasized in this book. Both Reeve and Janie reminisce about how she would literally and physically lean into him for support during the investigation and aftermath. This is Reeve's time; he's off at college, trying to find himself, and he makes a stupid mistake by telling Janie's story on the radio.As an adult reading this book, I was equally outraged at Reeve for the breach of trust, and also a little sympathetic. I mean, what teen/young adult hasn't made a stupid mistake? He was too perfect in the first two books: it was almost unreal how patient he was with Janie and how he never seemed to need time to pursue his own interests or anything. So I was mad at him for betraying Janie, and yet glad for him to be off at college pursuing an interest.Janie isn't completely in the background on this one; the reader still gets to spend time in her thoughts too, and to see her character also grow and mature. Particularly of note is the growth of strength in her relationships with Jody and Brian Spring. They really become much closer in this book than they did in Whatever Happened to Janie? Like the two previous books, this one won't be winning a literary award but it's just such an entertaining series! And for me, it was a delightful trip down memory lane, as I had begun the series when it was first released way back when. :)I listened to The Voice on the Radio rather than reading a physical copy, and I give the narration a thumbs up. Nothing spectacular to note, but it was good. Nice even tone and clear enunciation.
—Marie
Janie's boyfriend Reeve is older and in college already, and she really misses him, but he's up in his college town studying to be a radio DJ. Unbeknownst to her, Reeve decides one night--in the absence of anything else to talk about--that he'll discuss the bizarre story of Janie's kidnapping, with recognizable details and without permission. He rationalizes that this is just a college broadcast and he's not really hurting anything, but things get more complicated when one of the calls he takes claims to be one the people he's talking about in the story. When Janie finds out her life is being broadcast, she's furious. Will Reeve's actions mean the ending of their relationship? And who was the person who called claiming a lost connection to Janie?The sensationalism started to irk me by this book--more manufactured drama to keep the story going and continue to heap incredibly unlikely circumstances onto this girl--but overlooking that, the emotions of the characters were well told and everyone had the right amount of conflicting feelings and complex emotions. The book also pushed a theme of redemption and forgiveness.
—Julie Decker
Summary: It is the third book in the Janie Series, starting with The Face on the MIlk Carton. This book is about Reeves Shield's (Janie's boyfriend) college experience. He finds that he wants to do better at college since he didn't try hard in high school. He finds college life to be exhausting because of all of the pressure. He gets a job as a D.J. at the school's radio station. Feeling the pressure to come up with interesting things to talk about, he starts retelling Janie's whole life. He never thought it would ever get back to Janie. Reeve finds that people are more interested than he thought and can't help but continue telling the stories. He loved doing what he did while feeling quite guilty. Does his fame come crashing down?My reaction: I thought it was a creative way to continue the Janie series without being too redundant. It was easy to read and full of energy. I still think that the first book of the series was still the best but this was still a good way to tie in the first two. It had some strong and weak parts but overall it was good.Copyright: 1996Number of Pages: 183
—Shally Clark
