Helen Rena

I liked this book. It’s about a teenage girl who through a twist of fate gets involved in hunting for an ancient treasure and fighting off crazy religious cults. Yes, more than one. :) In spirit, it’s a lot like The Da Vinci Code except that it has teenagers for main characters instead of adults. And so yes, I liked the book. The treasure hunt was solid, and I loved Wasserman’s writing, and I was enjoying everything about the book until I made it almost to the end where a few sudden revelations were made. One of them baffled me beyond measure.

Like way beyond measure.

So it goes like this: the book’s protagonist, Nora, has a boyfriend named Max and a friend named Adriane, who is also in a relationship with a boy named Chris. Nora is very much in love with Max, but near the end of the book, we learn that Max is actually in love with Adriane, but since he is a villain and has been hiding it from Nora, he asked Adriane not to reveal their love and keep on staying in a relationship with Chris. Which is a sexual relationship, by the way. And this completely confused me. Would a seventeen-year-old girl really agree to have sex with the boyfriend she no longer loves because the guy she loves now asks her to? Would anyone agree to that? The book/Robin Wasserman says, “Yes, it’s no biggie,” but I somehow can’t buy it.

In my mind, the whole exchange, which is not shown in the book, but only implied, kind of goes like this:

Max: “Hey, Adriane, I work for Lord Voldermort, so we can’t tell Nora that I don’t love her. So can you please go on as usual with Chris, sex and all?”

Adriane: “Sure, no problem. I’m really good at pretending to enjoy having sex with someone I don’t love.”

Does this plot twist sound believable to you?