On the recommendation of my friend, Donna, also the mother of a teen young adult daughter, I discovered a new-to-me YA author, Margaret Peterson Haddix. I’ve read four of her books in the past week and a half, and although she doesn’t join my exclusive list of Best 100 Fiction Books Ever Written, she does manage to produce good, readable light fiction for teens and moms who enjoy YA fiction.

I read The House on the Gulf first, and I thought Ms. Haddix wrote mostly suspenseful mystery-type fiction. In this book, a single parent family, mother, son and thirteen year old daughter, is invited to house-sit over the summer for a retired couple who spend their summers up North and their winters in Florida. The house-sitting job is a godsend for this rather poverty-stricken family because the mom wants to go to college, and if she just gets in one good session of summer school, she might be able to get a scholarship. However, there’s something mysterious about the whole set-up. The brother, Bran, is acting really strange, hiding things, making odd rules for his younger sister, Britt, even lying about seemingly insignificant stuff. So Britt decides to find out what’s really going on. Although I could see parts of what was coming, I didn’t put the whole plot together until it was revealed at the end. So, I thought, a good suspense novel for thirteen year olds.

Then, I read Leaving Fishers, and I realized that Ms. Haddix writes movie of the week, current youth crisis novels. Leaving Fishers tells the story of Dorry, a lonely high school student who has just moved to the big city of Indianapolis with her family. She can’t find any friends at school until she becomes involved with the Fishers, a seemingly Christian youth group. The Fishers inundate Dorry with all the friendship and affection and attention she’s been missing, and she’s happy to reciprocate by agreeing with whatever they ask of her. However, it becomes more and more difficult to live within the guidelines set up for Fishers, and Dorry is torn between her commitment to God and the Fishers and her need to have an identity of her own. So, I thought, a good teen issue novel for fourteen and fifteen year olds.

With the next novel, Double Identity, the current issue (cloning) and the suspense (a mysterious stranger following the almost-thirteen year old protagonist) are both there, but a new element is added. This book is ever-so-slightly sci-fi. It takes place in the future, a few years in the future, and it’s about cloning human beings and what might happen if a scientist secretly and successfully cloned a baby. Lots of action, sympathetic characters, this one was my favorite of the four I read.

Finally, I read Escape from Memory, the story of Kira who finds out when she is hypnotized at a slumber party that she has repressed memories of escaping from a war zone. Kira begins to investigate her past, and she gets into more trouble than she and her best friend, Lynne, together, can handle. I had to suspend my disbelief a little too willingly for this one, but I enjoyed it. It featured computer recovery of memories, the Cold War, and ethical dilemmas for scientists.

All of Ms. Haddix’s books are quick reads, absorbing and well-written. I also noticed that she has sympathetic portrayals of Christians and Christianity which is a welcome change from some movies and books. Dancer Daughter read them, too, and enjoyed them, although she said that the chapters with invariable cliff-hanger endings were a little annoying. I imagine the technique does keep one reading. I’m looking forward to reading more of Ms. Haddix’s fiction, and that’s high praise from a rather critical old mom with a low tolerance for twaddle.