Cathy's Book - Hardcover

Sean Stewart is both an award-winning novelist and a pioneer in interactive and multimedia fiction. In 2001 he won the World Fantasy Award for his novel Galveston and acted as lead writer and co-designer of The Beast,” which Internet Life called the Citizen Kane of online entertainment.” He lives in Davis, CA. Jordan Weisman is the creator of the successful MechWarrior line of PC games, one of the best-selling PC games of all time, Creative Director for the entire Microsoft entertainment division, and co-director (along with Sean Stewart) of the I Love Bees game, which won a Webby Award and an International Game Designers Award for Innovation. He lives in Bellevue, Washington.

Grade 8 Up–When Cathy's boyfriend breaks up with her, she is determined to find out what's going on. Set in the San Francisco Bay area, the book tries to do too much. It is written as a mystery, and there are phone numbers to call, Web sites to visit, documents to look at, and doodles to view. But none of it adds up to an interesting story. The plot is almost a rote vampire tale with a family drama thrown in, and it takes forever to get into it. And the use of different fonts and doodles on almost every page makes it hard to read. The book seems intended to draw in gamers or fans of shows like Lost or the film Donnie Darko, but there are many media-generated worlds that do the job better. This book covers familiar ground, and spicing it up actually does more harm than good.–Amy Patrick, formerly at New York Public Library
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