Author: Arin Greenwood
Publisher: Soho Teen
Publication Date: November 12, 2013
ISBN-13: 978-1616952594
288 pp.
ARC provided by publisher
I think the marketing department got this one wrong. If you look at the cover, you'd think it's an intense thriller. But, really, it's a comedy.
Zoey Trask is a senior at a private school in Washington, D.C., but she's the New Girl, and she's also the Tragedy Girl, since her mom was recently murdered during a mugging. She has a younger brother who's a somewhat high-functioning autistic and a kooky libertarian dad. She's crushing on cute boy Pete and wondering if she'll get into Berkeley when her dad is kidnapped. The kidnappers are demanding the J-File, although Zoey has no idea what that is. Except her brother has been getting messages in his dreams from their dead mother that help might explain what and where the J-File is.
That synopsis sounds like a thriller, right? But Zoey has an oddly snarky tone, and kidnappers are oddly inept, and even the fight scenes are oddly comical. It's definitely a comedy posing as a thriller. Marketing should have gone with a cover similar to Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls series and they would have done a better job of finding their audience.
If you go into this thinking it's a straight-up thriller, you're going to be annoyed by Zoey's ongoing inner monologue. But if you like snarky, oddball girls who are as worried about what to wear to a party as they are about their kidnapped dad, then Save the Enemy is for you.
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