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Panic


Against her better judgment, Diamond Landers disregards all that she’s been taught about strangers, leaves the safety of her best friend and neighborhood mall to pursue an opportunity that turns out to be too good to be true, and finds herself abducted by a well dressed, handsome pedophile who was supposedly on his way to meet his wife and daughter in order to cast a movie that is in need of a star.  While Diamond is forced to endure an abuse that she could never have imagined, her family and friends experience their own torments as they frantically await even a morsel of news. Draper’s work walks a tightrope  attempting to balance desperation and hope, empowerment and powerlessness, sufficient details and information overload, debilitating horror and quotidian life – failing as often as it succeeds.  The reader ping pongs between feeling that she’s trapped in a 1980s after-school special and being genuinely caught up in the whirlpool of the characters’ personal dramas.  Unfortunately, this sense of engagement is generated by the lives of the minor characters, rather than the harrowing abduction of the protagonist. Nonetheless, readers seeking contemporary urban fiction who want to be targeted, but not patronized, might find this novel to their liking as Draper astutely avoids stereotypical portrayals of African-American teenagers; however, its references to current music and light sprinkling of modern slang is unlikely to age well.   Consequently, Panic is recommended as an additional selection, with reservations.
  • Panic by Sharon M. Draper
  • Secondary
  • Atheneum Books for Young Readers
  • 262 pp.
  • Published March 12, 2013
  • ISBN 978-1-44240-896-8
  • $17.99
  • Realistic Fiction
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