It's a decent mystery and I liked the more hardboiled aspects of it. But from the get-go, North does not seem to know how to write children. Oh he knows how to write about children--the disappearances and heart-stopping fear of a child in danger is convincingly scary. But Jake doesn't really come off very naturally, and the supernatural elements to the story are all pretty obvious. I rushed through this at a steady pace, but I don't know that I'll remember it for very long after reading. It just didn't seem like North was equally interested in everything he wrote about; he was kind of phoning it in with some of the descriptions of kids and of grief. I didn't feel much for these specific characters, I just felt the general emotions North was clearly trying to evoke, like fear or sympathy. This is a good read for a trip or the beach.