My Thoughts: The Disappearance of Emily H by Barrie Summy

4 fudgy brownies.

Cover Love:
Yes.  I love the way the bridge is almost part of the font.

Why I Wanted to Read This:
The synopsis for this book got me very excited.  A middle grade book about bullying with a little supernatural bent.  I was very excited to read this!  Here's the synopsis from GoodReads:

A girl is missing. Three girls are lying. One girl can get to the truth.

Emily Huvar vanished without a trace. And the clues are right beneath Raine’s fingertips. Literally. Raine isn’t like other eighth graders. One touch of a glittering sparkle that only Raine can see, and she’s swept into a memory from the past. If she touches enough sparkles, she can piece together what happened to Emily.

When Raine realizes that the cliquey group of girls making her life miserable know more than they’re letting on about Emily’s disappearance, she has to do something. She’ll use her supernatural gift for good . . . to fight evil.

But is it too late to save Emily?

Romance?: There is a cute little middle school crush.

My Thoughts:
It's very hard not to feel for Raine right off the bat.  She lost her grandmother, who is the only one Raine knew with the same "talent" Raine had, and was living with her scatterbrained mother.  Her mom can't commit to staying in one place for very long, mostly because she gets involved with the wrong man, then runs when it goes bad.  So, when school starts for Raine she is not optimistic about staying there for very long.  She tries to keep herself apart from others so that she won't have too many ties to break when she moves away.

What sets Raine apart from others is her ability to see and collect sparkles.  The sparkles are memories and Raine's grandmother was training Raine on how to use her gift.  Now her grandmother is gone and her ability to see sparkles is waning, so when she sees one it's hard for her to not go after it.  Soon after school starts Raine discovers that she is living in the house of a girl named Emily who had disappeared a few weeks before.  Every now and again Raine comes across sparkles that give her memories of Emily's life before she disappeared.  And she discovers that there was a group of girls at the middle school who were making Emily's life miserable.

This seemed like a straight forward bullying/mean girls story, but there are twists and the reason for Emily's disappearance is not what it seemed.  I really liked the twists because they came across as very unexpected and it made it a good mystery, one of the best middle school ones I have read in a long time.

This ended strong, without a hint of a sequel, which is fine but, I would definitely visit Raine and her unique ability again.

To Sum Up:  Buying this one for my library and I will be book talking it this fall!