Title: Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City
Author: Kirsten Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 1-58234-960-6
Starred review in: Booklist (7-06), nominated to BBYA
Review: Ananka Fishbein has resigned her life to social purgatory and boredom, until two extraordinary things happen: A sinkhole reveals an underground furnished room, and petite, white-haired Kiki Strike appears at her school. Employing her minimal detective skills, Ananka trails Kiki and the two eventually go into business together. Their mission is to explore the Shadow City, a world of rooms and streets below the NYC subways. Kiki employs three other girls, including a renegade Girl Scout, in what is both her goal to explore the Shadow City and solve a mystery of her own.
More than anything else, this book is fun. It's fast-paced with one foot solidly planted over the line of reality. The girls display extraordinary talents but also extraordinary friendships, and the book works because the reader cares what happens to the characters outside their adventure. The pursuit of the Shadow City brings out the best in the girls and it becomes their relationships, rather than the adventure (although there's plenty of that right up to the end!) that keeps the pages turning. You'll want to go on a tour of Kirsten Miller's New York when you're done reading.
Reviewed by: Carlie W., BCCLS
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