The Holy Terror

I've only read one other book by McMann before, but it seems like for me her books are always lacking one very important thing. In Wake, I felt that she had an interesting story and concept, but I didn't care about her characters. In this one, however, I liked the characters but thought the overall plot was dumb. Hopefully the next book she writes she can create characters I care about AND a compelling story.Even though I found the plot of this one to be somewhat ridiculous, I couldn't help but quickly flip the pages to see how everything would turn out. Kendall lives in the small rural town of Cryer's Cross. The summer before, one of the teen girls in the community disappeared without a trace. They searched for her but eventually they all gave up and went back to their lives. The new school year starts up and Kendall is excited for soccer, dance, and hanging out with her boyfriend, Nico. Two new teens move to Cryer's Cross and for once Kendall has something different to focus on besides school and her parent's potato farm. Unfortunately though, another teen goes missing soon after the school year starts, this time it's Nico, and Kendall's world is turned upside down as she desperately tries to figure out what has happened to him.Kendall is a very different character from most teen protagonists; she has a semi-severe case of OCD. I don't think her condition was elaborated on enough to really make sense of things, and I also felt that her OCD was glorified a bit, but it didn't get to the point where I was disgusted by the portrayal. It was almost like McMann turned her disorder into a special power of sorts, which was odd. I don't have any personal connection with OCD, but I could see others potentially being bothered by this.I enjoyed the introduction of a Mexican character, Jacian ... but that could be because of my bias toward Latin men. I connected with the characters in this book more than I did in her other series, but that's not saying all that much. In the end, I thought the main story-line was weak. Take a look at the cover. You see that desk? Well, just keep in mind that it's an EVIL desk. Yeah, that's the story, pretty much. The ending and "big reveal" is pretty lame, and not all that original or special. I wanted to like this book more because I liked the characters, but in the end it just wasn't all that great. Maybe one day McMann will write something fantastic, and I'll just have to keep an eye out for that.