Ransom By Lois Duncan

The book I chose is Ransom by Lois Duncan. This is a story about five teenagers, Dexter, Jesse, Bruce, Glenn, and Marianne, that get kidnapped and their parents are contacted to pay a ransom to get them back. The teenagers are from very different backgrounds and have different social statuses at school. They all live in a “rich” known neighborhood called Valley Gardens which is how the kidnappers chose them. Ransom is a crime thriller and the mystery of not knowing what’s going to happen next keeps your reading. This book teaches the reader a lesson about not judging somebody off their looks and what other people say, but to really get to know a person and accept them for who they are. Glenn is the star athlete for the school. He is muscular and tall. He thinks that everybody likes him and wants to be his friend. This makes him seem like he thinks he is better than everybody else. Bruce, however, is Glenn’s little brother he is more into technology. He lives in the shadow of Glenn. He doesn’t mind it though because he looks up to his brother and wants to be like him in many ways. Bruce is the tiny one, he doesn’t look at all like he is Glenn’s little brother because they are so different. Dexter is a very shy, kind of guy. He sits back and watches the world
pass him by. His parents died so now he lives with his uncle who is a bachelor and is never home. Dexter also suffers from a disorder that makes arm deformed, and he is very self-conscious about it. Jesse is the new to Valley Gardens. She comes from a military family that travels a lot. She is very mature for her age, because of growing up in a military household. Marianne is the popular cheerleader. She is going through a rough time in her life. Her parents divorced and her mom has remarried and she doesn’t care for her stepfather at all. Marianne thinks that her real dad loves her and will rescue her. She is also Glenn’s girlfriend. Buck is one of the three people that have kidnapped the kids. Buck is very quick-tempered and doesn’t care about nobody but himself. Rita is a very unattractive woman. She is also Buck’s wife and she follows him around like a puppy dog. If you saw her you would never think she Buck would be with someone like her, because he is very handsome. Juan is the last kidnapper; he does all the dirty work for Buck. In the book, a bunch of teens assume they’re simply taking a bus ride home, however it seems that it’s nothing they thought it’d be.
Three individuals take them into the woods where they hold them prisoner until they get the money they need. The teenagers have issues of their own. Jesse is the average girl, and nobody pays much attention to her. Dexter is the teen that separates himself from everybody as a result of his disability. Glenn is the boy that solely cares only about himself and Bruce is his little brother that cares about others. Marianne is the popular girl with a tousled family. Although they suffer from their circle of relative issues, all of them find themselves teaching one another a
lesson. Even in the beginning while they’re on the bus you begin to urge to sympathize with them and their troubles. Towards the end the characters helped me predict what may happen althought it had not been perpetually right. If the reader noticed, the teenagers were chosen to be abducted as a result of they were from a rich community. With that being said, the kidnappers thought they would get a large amount of money. The plot is effective as a result of one even leads up to the following. It’s additionally effective because it’s well thought out and straightforward to grasp.
I thought the book was terribly exciting and nail-biting. The book had superb detail and a motivating plot. I liked the twist when Jesse and Dexter fall in love. You never would have seen that coming. I conjointly liked how the author described the action in nice detail. It created me an illusion as if I was right there seeing it all happen first-hand. I don’t believe the author could’ve written this book any better than she did already.