Book: Wish You Were Dead by Todd Strasser

Rating: 4 Stars

Release date: September 22, 2009 from Egmont USA

From: Publisher

Summary: Str-S-d:
I’ll begin with Lucy. She is definitely first on the list. You can’t believe how it feels to be in the cafeteria and turn around and there she is staring at me like I’m some disgusting bug or vermin. Does she really think I WANT to be this way? I hate you, Lucy. I really hate you. You are my #1 pick. I wish you were dead.

The day after anonymous blogger Str-S-d wishes the popular girl would die, Lucy vanishes. The students of Soundview High are scared and worried. Especially frightened and wracked with guilt is Madison Archer, Lucy’s friend and the last person to see her the night she disappeared.

As days pass with no sign of the missing girl, even the attention of Tyler, an attractive new student, is not enough to distract Madison from her growing sense of foreboding. When two more popular students disappear after their names are mentioned on Str-S-d’s blog, the residents of Soundview panic.

Meanwhile, Madison receives anonymous notes warning that she could be next. Desperate to solve the mystery before anyone else disappears, Madison turns to Tyler, but can she trust him when it becomes clear that he knows more than he’s sharing?

The clock is ticking. Madison must uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearances . . . before her name appears in Str-S-d’s blog.

In the spirit of stories like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Todd Strasser updates the teen thriller for the techno age with Wish You Were Dead, the first installment in a new “thrill”-ogy.

Wish You Were Dead is one of the most unique stories I have read recently. It was also one of the creepiest. It definitely wasn’t in the same category of creepy as The Devouring but it was really scary in its own way and what is worse is that it was way more realistic. The stuff that happened in Wish You Were Dead could very well happen in real life and that was what made it so hard for me to read.

From the summary you can tell that teenagers are being kidnapped based on the writings of an anonymous blogger. What you don’t find out from the summary is that there is a lot more going on in the book than just that. And you don’t really find out all the stuff until the very end when it’s revealed who the kidnapper is. It definitely wasn’t predictable and I never would have guessed. It was a real shocker for me. Probably for everyone else who reads the book too.

The story is told from Madison’s point of view, at least most of the time. Sometimes it switched around to the other teens involved but not often. It also switched when one of the teens was being kidnapped. It was written from their point of view when it was happening. It made the book seem a lot scarier because you saw what they were going through and you saw how helpless they were to fight. It was horrible.

The one thing that didn’t really make sense to me was Madison’s cyberstalker. It is revealed at the end who it is but I don’t get why it had to be part of the book. It didn’t really add anything to the story and it wasn’t really clear why the person was stalking her. It just confused me a little. It wasn’t needed and there was already enough going on in the book without that.

Overall, Wish You Were Dead is one of those books I recommend reading when you aren’t home alone. It creeped me out but it was definitely in a good way. If you haven’t read any of Todd Strasser’s books this is a good one to start with. =]