Abrahams Reality Check

For this book talk assignment, I read the realistic fiction novel Reality Check by Peter Abrahams.

This setting of this story is primarily in a town called Dover in Vermont during the present day. Dover is home to a high-end boarding school called “Dover Academy”. The boarding school is the school that the main character, Cody’s ex-girlfriend, Clea, attends. Cody and Clea used to be a couple and lived in Little Neck, New Jersey. Unfortunately, since Clea got a B in her high school Calculus class, her parents shipped her off to boarding school. Since she was now going to be living out-of-state, Cody chose to break up with her. The plot then thickens for once she arrived at “Dover Academy”, she went missing. Newspapers had reported her disappearance, and now Cody is on a mission trying to find her. Through his journey he learns that, if he tries hard enough,

This is because Abrahams constructed a plot that has a great combination of mystery and suspense. The reader also is given the opportunity to put the puzzle pieces together, so to speak in order to find out what happened to Clea. Also, there are many intense moments in the novel as well. For example, there is a character who kills Clea’s horse by shooting it. Although it had its ups, it also had it downs. I gave it a 4 instead of a 5 because I felt that there was a lot of filler and unnecessary parts that were added to the story. For example, when Cody was driving to Dover from Little Rock, the author dedicated two whole chapters just for that. Another moment that I did not particularly care for was when it got very complicating at the end. The reader needs to pull from various events throughout the story to come up with the right conclusion. Also, the novel’s ending had wording which was difficult to understand. For example, the term “bear claw place and back” was used. I was unfamiliar with the term until I have inferred that it meant a certain amount of