Title: Chasing the Skip
Author: Janci Patterson
Publish Date: October 2nd 2012 by Henry Holt and Co.
Source: ARC provided by the publisher
Buy it from: Amazon
Goodreads summary:
Ricki’s dad has never been there for her. He’s a bounty hunter who spends his time chasing parole evaders—also known as “skips”—all over the country. But now since Ricki’s mom ran off, Ricki finds herself an unwilling passenger in a front-row seat to her father’s dangerous lifestyle.
Ricki’s feelings get even more confused when her dad starts chasing seventeen-year-old Ian Burnham. She finds herself unavoidably attracted to the dark-eyed felon who seems eager to get acquainted. But Ricki thinks she’s ever in control—the perfect manipulator. Little does she know that Ian isn’t playing their game by her rules.
Review:
Chasing the Skip is a prime example of why you should strive to go into a novel without any preconceptions. My expectation: a book with a little swoon… perhaps a bad boy with a heart of gold playing the love interest.
I was wrong.
Our main character Ricki is, in a lot of ways, a typical teenager. She thinks of herself as more of an adult than she really is. She’s a little vulnerable, which she hides by way of snark. She’s lived with her mom all of her life and her dad has just barely maintained a position at the edge of the picture. Now she’s supposed to accept his authority over her? Not likely.
That element of her thinking she’d smarter than she really is made it real tough to sympathize with her. She kept making terrible decisions. It wasn’t until she let that vulnerability creep through a bit more, that my feelings for Ricki softened.
I did enjoy getting to know her dad and, though I agreed with Ricki that he should have been around more, I sympathized far more with him than I did her. That’s one of the things that comes from reading some YA novels from this side of 20 I suppose. There’s not a whole lot of crossover potential in Chasing the Skip.
What it really comes down to is that my feelings about the books are lukewarm. It has a unique-enough premise, but the prose and characters missed that essential spark that I felt I needed.
To sum up: A lighthearted novel that skips the froth of romance to focus on a father/daughter relationship. A quick and easy read.
