Review: Wish You Were Dead by Todd Strasser

Wish You Were Dead by Todd Strasser
Hardcover, 236 pages
Published September 22nd 2009 by EgmontUSA
Goodreads|Amazon

Str-S-d:
I’ll begin with Lucy. She is definitely first on the list. You can’t believe how it feels to be in the cafeteria and turn around and there she is staring at me like I’m some disgusting bug or vermin. Does she really think I WANT to be this way? I hate you, Lucy. I really hate you. You are my #1 pick. I wish you were dead.

The day after anonymous blogger Str-S-d wishes the popular girl would die, Lucy vanishes. The students of Soundview High are scared and worried. Especially frightened and wracked with guilt is Madison Archer, Lucy’s friend and the last person to see her the night she disappeared.
As days pass with no sign of the missing girl, even the attention of Tyler, an attractive new student, is not enough to distract Madison from her growing sense of foreboding. When two more popular students disappear after their names are mentioned on Str-S-d’s blog, the residents of Soundview panic.
Meanwhile, Madison receives anonymous notes warning that she could be next. Desperate to solve the mystery before anyone else disappears, Madison turns to Tyler, but can she trust him when it becomes clear that he knows more than he’s sharing?
The clock is ticking. Madison must uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearances . . . before her name appears in Str-S-d’s blog.

In the spirit of stories like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Todd Strasser updates the teen thriller for the techno age with Wish You Were Dead, the first installment in a new “thrill”-ogy.

Wow this book surpassed my expectations. I really wasn’t expecting much at all. I found this book on the clearance shelf at Half Priced Books for $1.00. I had never heard of it but I thought it sounds good and the cover was a little creepy so I didn’t pass it up. Since it had the word “dead” in it, it fit nicely into my “death” TBR category for October and I randomly grabbed it this morning to take to work with me.

To really prove that I had no idea about this book I just figured out that this is a series and there are two more books! I will definitely try to find the next two to read.

This is definitely a quick read. I could have finished this in one sitting if I had enough time. I don’t know why I was so hooked on it but I seemed to just be flying through the pages. There were so many things to guess about that I just wanted to keep reading on.

I can honestly say that I was shocked to find out who it was at the end. I would have never guessed. I liked getting to see the inserts from the kidnapper’s point of view (if that’s what you want to call it). I also liked seeing the actual blog posts and the comments that went with it. That really added to the story and I think was the reason that I wanted to continue on.

I really liked all the characters in this story and I think they all played their roles well. There was one character that I didn’t like as a person, Jen, but that was the perfect character to have in the story. I thought more would come of her but the story didn’t go the way I was expecting, which was a good thing.

I think the author did a great job explaining the lifestyle that these children lead and you really got the feeling of how rich they were. I understand that it helped add to the feeling that they should have been safe and something like this happening in their neighborhood was crazy. Especially the way some of the parents acted with their children.

I did find one grammatical error in my book. I had to re-read the sentence a couple times to make sure it wasn’t me. “The house was empty, and my room began to feel claustrophobic in my room.” That confused the heck out of me until I figured out it was an error. That is the first time that has happened to me.

Oh! A bonus for my book was that it is autographed and I had no idea! I just happened to open it a couple pages in and I could see some marker going through from the next page. I thought someone had written their name or something in it, which I hate, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it was autographed by Todd Strasser! That made my morning.

Overall, great book, definitely pick it up if you get the chance.

My Rating: