aka YA Literature

Monday, April 12, 2010

Numbers by Rachel Ward

When Jem looks into someone's eyes, she sees a number. That number is the date they are going to die. She doesn't want to see the numbers, and she tries to avoid looking into people's eyes. This "power," along with the fact that she's been in foster homes since her mother died of a drug overdose, means she is a loner. When she meets Spider, they get along well, but Jem doesn't want to get close to anyone, and she especially doesn't want to get close to Spider since she sees that he only has three months to live. Try as she might, however, she keeps getting more and more caught up with Spider, and things really take off when she and Spider are caught on camera running away from the London Eye just before a bomb explodes. The police want them for questioning, either as suspects or witnesses, not knowing, of course, that they ran because Jem freaked out when she saw that everyone around them had the same death date (that very day). Once Jem and Spider are on the run from the law and Jem is trying to figure out if she can do anything to change the death dates, the action and tension of the book really get notched up. A good read.

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