Fake ID by Walter Sorrells

Amazon Summary:
Sixteen-year-old Chastity and her mother have been on the run since Chass was a baby, assuming new identities in every town. She doesn’t know why they are running, who her father is, or even her real name. On the night of Chass’s sixteenth birthday, her mother disappears. Police find her abandoned car, blood matching her DNA, and a purse containing six ID cards. Chass doesn’t believe her mother is dead, only that she had to run again. If Chastity doesn’t find her mother in six days, she’ll be put into foster care—that is, if she isn’t murdered first.
Review:
Before I get started there is something that I just have to share. So I got about three (very short) chapters into this book, when she (Chastity - the first person protagonist) launches into a description of her friend Ben, including the line "He's my best friend in the world, but like I say, he's not my boyfriend". I instantly thought of the one word to describe Ben's plight that every other teen who has read this book within the past year would have thought of, and almost crowed to the skies - "FRIENDZONED!!!". Instead I simply chuckled and shook my head. Thing is, this book could be considered ahead of it's time, seeing as it was published at least five years before the idea of "friendzoning" came into existence. I must admit however, that while I laughed as any one of us would have, I do feel the poor guy's pain (read: I can sympathize). Sigh...
One other thing I was surprised by was a passing reference to Sylvia Plath, which would have been innocuous enough had I not read BZRK earlier this summer. Plath is the the pseudonym of one of the main characters in BZRK. An interesting coincidence to say the least.
Enough of the pre-show - it's time for the feature presentation:
In tone, style and genre, Fake ID is very similar to Peter Abraham's Reality Check... only sans the sex scenes and constant stream of foul language that Reality Check did (just so you know, I'm not recommending Reality Check, in fact, I'm doing just the opposite - you should avoid reading Reality Check like the plague - it's just that bad).
Now that that's out of the way, onto the good and bad:
1. Lack of plausibility. I'm sorry that alot of the plot of this book wasn't very realistic, which was quite unfortunate. A lot of events that took place either seemed like they wouldn't happen that way in real life, or were far too coincidental to be realistic. It really took away from the book.
2. Characters. Certain characters weren't as developed as they should have been, which made their actions quite hard to understand at times.
3. Ethics. There's a really controversial question out there these days - "Do the ends justify the means?". Sorrells seems to think so. Chass lies constantly, skips school and detention on multiple occasions, breaks-and-enters, gets fake ID (beyond the stuff she already has) to get into a bar, and so on and so forth. These actions are all portrayed as means to a good end, but that doesn't change the fact that they are wrong and/or illegal. Surely it would be possible to have her solve the mystery without her having to descend into morally grey areas so many times. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew didn't have to do that stuff very much, and were still quite successful at solving the mysteries they happened upon. This is also a problem in the Virals series by Kathy Reichs, but it's much easier to live with since they (the main characters) don't do it quite as much and they always get punished for it.
4. The Beginning. The introduction was almost nonexistent. The reader is just thrown into Chass' world with little explanation of who everyone is and what normal life is like for her. It takes a while to figure that all out and it takes away from the book.
5. Intensity and Pacing. This book isn't especially fast paced or intense - which is to be expected since this is a mystery novel and not a thriller - but once you get about a third of the way through, the tension doesn't let up long enough for you to be able to put the book down. In other words, I was up way to late last night finishing this book because of just that. Had there been a point where the tension let up just enough to quit reading, I probably would have, but that just didn't happen.
I haven't been big into mystery novels since my Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew phase back in elementary school. Since then I've graduated to bigger, better things (read: thrillers), but when I saw this book I decided it looked interesting enough to read. For a mystery novel, it was pretty good all things considered, though I'm not sure whether or not I'll read the sequel. Recommended to fans of the mystery element in Virals or fans of Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys looking for a different breed of mystery to read (whaddya know, I'm a poet and I don't know it XD).
3.5/5 stars
PS For some reason, this book made me want to sing this song at the top of my lungs, even though it's totally unrelated. Maybe because Chass is such a talented musician? I don't know. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN_ze7QVYKg