Gr 5-8Eighth-grader Violet, a triplet, is fragile and plain compared to her two popular sisters. Suddenly, she begins discovering mysterious messages from the time of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Old letters and diary entries refer to a girl named "V," who strangely resembles Violet herself in the 1990s, and there are hints that something terrible happened to "V" nearly 100 years ago. As the clues build up, Violet gradually figures out that she is being sent a warning from the past and fears for her life. The messages make Violet stand out from her sisters, and she discovers strength and resourcefulness she never knew she had. The story begins slowly as the various plot elements are laid out. As the clues start to come together, Violet's experiences become more absorbing. The repeated discoveries she makes seem too unlikely and coincidental at first, but when she learns that a force from the past has planted them in her way, it all makes sense. There is true excitement by the climax, as Violet discovers that the Golden Gate Bridge may collapse in a quake, and only she can prevent a tragedy. The resolution is particularly satisfying, as Violet not only saves the day, but resists the temptation to brag about her secret heroism. Although the protagonist is not a fully drawn character, this title should have strong appeal for fans of fantasy, ghosts, and time travel. Readers who persist through the slow beginning will be rewarded with an absorbing and suspenseful adventure.Steven Engelfried, West Linn Public Library, OR
Violet, Rose, and Jasmine Jackstone are triplets, but only beautiful and popular Rose and Jasmine are identical. Violet is the odd one out; she looks quite different and was, for a long time, very frail. She also has a passionate fear of earthquakes and suffers visions of children crying for help whenever there's an earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area, where they live. As the triplets help their parents in readying a new store for their pros-perous florist chain, Violet begins to find mysterious letters and messages, obviously written in the past, which seem to refer to her and incidents in her life. They also present a historical puzzle, seeming to hint at a murder and involvement in the great 1906 earthquake and fire. As Violet pursues this riddle, gaining self-confidence, she begins to engage her sisters' interest and respect, loses her fear of dying young, and even meets a boy she likes. The two themes of adventure and family relationships are deftly woven into the historical drama, and heightened by an atmospheric sense of place. Although credibility is begged here and there, this is a clever and skillfully written mystery.
A modern California teenager finds letters and diary pages from the early years of this century in this gripping, emotionally turbulent story from the author of Dreadful Sorry (1993). Violet, the non-identical member in a set of triplets, has had heart problems since birth, but is nevertheless tired of being babied by her sisters and parents. Helping to restore an old San Francisco house, she finds love letters from "Hal" to "V" and a 1906 diary, kept in the back of old ledgers, in which V's nurse, Laela, describes caring for her chronically ill charge and professes her own hidden love for Hal. Oddly, the more Violet learns about V's life, the more her own seems to move in parallel; even more distressingly, as a series of small earthquakes rock the area, Violet begins having visions and dreams of children caught in a fiery disaster. Both V and Laela had visions too, of disaster on a great bridge, and as more pages of the diary fall into Violet's hands, she becomes convinced that she's being sent a warning. Is another great quake coming? As Reiss weaves in well-timed twists and eerie coincidences that set the plot thrumming with tension, she also captures with compelling insight the changes adolescence brings to the complex relationships among Violet, her sisters, and her parents. Reiss juggles multiple themes and plotlines with masterful control in this absorbing page-turner. (Fiction. 11-15)
