Bound To Stay Bound

Bulletin for the Center... - 12/01/2011 Angel’s mother always knew how to pick a loser, and her ultimate hookup with Scotty ended in her murder. Angel, herself a witness to and nearly a victim of Scotty’s fury, is now on the run, but trying to stay one step ahead of Scotty, a professional tracker with several valuable connections through his host of illegal activities, seems impossible. As Angel hides out among a Mexican immigrant community on southern California’s Salton Sea, she draws each family who aids her into peril from Scotty. Rita, a Head Start teacher with a soft spot for kids, is determined to do all she can to keep Angel safe until the police can amass enough evidence to put Scotty away, but Angel comes to believe her best chance is to turn tracker herself and kill Scotty before he can kill her. Price starts off with harrowing scenes focused on the murder and Angel’s initial escape and then shifts into a meticulously paced cat-and-mouse chase, wringing more terror from a casually dropped cigarette butt, a locksmith van circling the neighborhood, and a handcuff purchase than many authors accomplish with a full-out bloodbath. With its blood-red cover and “What makes the hunted turn hunter?” tagline, this will be a magnet for thriller aficionados. EB - Copyright 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Booklist - 11/01/2011 From Night of the Hunter to countless westerns, the theme of “a bad man coming” is a powerful one: there is an unstoppable force on its way to deliver a brutal reckoning, and the fun is in watching the heroes try (in vain) to avoid the final battle. Price’s fast, sharp, unsentimental contribution follows 14-year-old Angel, on the run since a villain named Scotty (ominously kept offstage for almost the duration of the book) murdered her mother and is now coming after Angel to wipe up the last bit of evidence. After racing across the desert, Angel stumbles into the lives of an extended family of immigrants—some legal, some not—who want to help the shell-shocked, rage-filled girl without putting their own loved ones in danger. Price’s biggest curve is turning the hunted into the hunter after Angel decides that she must find Scotty first. Never showy, this is hard, gritty realism, and Price’s depiction of the twitchy psyche of an abused girl is dead-on. Serious thriller fans will be more than satisfied. - Copyright 2011 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 02/01/2012 Gr 7 Up—Angel's life is a nightmare. Her mother drinks and does drugs and her mother's boyfriend, Scotty, sexually abuses her. One morning after a night of hiding from him in the desert, Angel returns home to find that he has killed her mother and has been waiting so he can murder her, too. Angel barely escapes, but since Scotty is an expert tracker, the hunt has only just begun. During her flight, she meets people who put themselves in danger to protect her, acts of kindness that the untrusting 14-year-old cannot understand. As these caring folks keep shielding her from Scotty, who always seems to know where she is, Angel struggles with the danger she's putting them in and she wonders if she would be better off on her own. She begins to realize that no matter how worthless she feels, she needs and deserves love and that she is important to others. The story is a fast-paced adventure with an interesting premise, but at times it's hard to believe that so many strangers would risk their lives to hide the teen in their homes. Fans of dramatic, high-adrenaline books with hard-knocked protagonists might enjoy the basic premise.—Traci Glass, Eugene Public Library, OR - Copyright 2012 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.