Want to Go Private?: Review

Title: Want to Go Private?

Author: Sarah Darer Littman

Release Date: August 2011

Published By: Scholastic

Pages: 336

Goodreads Rating: 4.20 stars

Review: Abby's just started high school, but it's not as exciting as she'd hoped. Her once-happy life feels like it's falling to pieces, and the only thing that makes her happy is talking with Luke, an older guy she met online. Discouraged with her family, friends, and school, she made a plan to meet him that no one else knew about. But now she's missing, and if they don't put the pieces together fast enough, she could be gone forever.

What hooked me initially with this book was the premise. The Internet provides a new way for predators to gain trust and access to unknowing children and teenagers, and WANT TO GO PRIVATE explored this very terrifying and real possibility. However, while the premise was intriguing, I did feel like this book wasn't executed as well as it could have been.

Abby in particular bothered me. She seemed a little whiny at times when dealing with her mountain-loads of angst, and I found some of her actions to be extremely foolish. Although I know it definitely happens in real life, the author didn't make me believe that she would fall for Luke's tricks so easily, and I had a hard time accepting that she would realize how old he was and not have major warning bells going off in her head.

Of course, that's not to say I didn't like this book. Something about the writing was very gripping and I often found that once I picked it up, I wouldn't be able to put it down for quite a while after. As much as Abby could irritate me in places, I was strongly invested in the story and had to know what happened to her and whether or not they would be able to figure it out.

This is a chilling cautionary tale of what happens when one girl falls for a man's lies over the Internet. Though in places it was difficult to understand her occasionally stupid actions, her spiral into reliance on Luke and isolation from everyone else was all too real. WANT TO GO PRIVATE had an excellent premise and addictive writing with an execution that fell just a bit too short, but it remains something everyone should consider reading.


I received a free copy of this book for review. This is no way affected my review, which is 100% honest.