DANGEROUS BOY

Danger threatens when Harper falls for the perfect boyfriend, maybe.

Harper can’t believe that sensitive, handsome Logan really wants her to be his exclusive girlfriend. She’s just a farm girl who doesn’t even wear makeup. But Logan sweeps her off her feet and seems to feel the same about her. When disturbing things begin to happen around town—birds fall, dead, from the sky, bloody bones turn up in mailboxes, red handprints cover students’ cars—no one can make any sense of it. Harper has her suspicions, however, once she meets someone she didn’t even know existed: Daemon, Logan’s identical twin brother. Daemon enjoys violence and deliberately frightens Harper. Harper grows more suspicious of Daemon when a sabotaged motorbike sends her to the hospital, and someone nearly kills her friend. She investigates and learns about some things in Logan’s past that he has hidden. Still, she’s so attracted to him, and he begs her so effectively to stay, that she continues the relationship, and that decision could lead to her death. Hubbard begins with an exciting, frightening chase scene then flashes back to tell the story in sequence. Astute readers will pick up on the solution to the mystery from miles away, but that only heightens the suspense, especially as they have already tasted that chase scene. The difficulty here is the cop-out, too-easy resolution: The author briefly presents an interesting, realistic scenario to explain the mystery but bows to current trends and pushes a nonsensical paranormal solution instead. What a shame.

The fun here is in getting to the silly resolution, not achieving it.