Review By: Sarah W (11th grade)
Grade Range: 9th grade and up
Genre: Mystery/ Supernatural/ Suspense
Literary Merit: Good
Characterization: Good

Mei has a troubled family life. With her delinquent brother and mother in denial, she has a lot of responsibility, especially since her dad left. She loves children and has always worked with them, but this year is different, this year she’ll be working with them as an academic tutor, not a babysitter. Mei is going to be going away for the summer with the Morisons to tutor their little girl Ella in their huge vacation home. The kind of money Mei is surrounded by in these short few months makes it feel like she’s taking a vacation to an entirely different world. The pay is amazing, she gets to stay near the ocean, this job seems like a dream come true! But, the Morisons are strange. Why does Vanessa, the mother, care about whether or not Mei is superstitious? Why doesn’t little Ella seem to have an opinion on anything? And even more than that, why does Ella’s older brother, Henry, have to be so awful to Mei? During this summer Mei’s life will change dramatically, between her own family drama, the Morisons’ family drama, and Ella’s weird, robot-like, behavior, who knows whether or not she’ll be the same person she was when she left her small home in the middle of the busy city. Read to find out.
Liana Liu’s novel, Shadow Girl, had many amazing qualities and a quirkiness to it that you don’t see often. The novel had a mysterious atmosphere with little to no complex sentences, making it a very easy read. One of the best parts of this novel was the amazing character development with Liu’s characters. Mei grew a lot during the novel, starting out very one-sided about many different topics, and using her experience in this household to get a broader perspective of the world. The Morrison siblings also evolve well. Henry becomes less closed off and we finally see him as a full emotional character instead of just a bully, and his love for his sister makes him a very realistic well-rounded character. Ella also starts out very closed off emotionally, but we can see her open up to Mei more and more as time goes on. She starts having more opinions about her classwork and shows interest in things other than her mom’s opinion. I also really enjoyed the pacing of the novel, I felt like there was just the right amount of suspense and knowledge to have you craving for more. One of the biggest problems I had with Shadow Girl, however, was the ending. I felt it was very abrupt and left too much that we didn’t know. What happened to Ella and Henry? How is the grandpa? The relationships in this novel seemed to end rather suddenly, and I feel that because of all that happened in the book this didn’t give the reader the necessary closure they needed. Through it all Shadow Girl was an interesting read, and while I enjoyed it, it’s not something I would read twice.
Recommendations: Anyone who wants a quick thriller to read between books. ( )