Dangerous by Shannon Hale - ADVISABLE

Hale, Shannon  Dangerous, 390 pgs.  Bloomsbury, 2014.  $17.99  Content: Language: PG (3 swears); Mature Content: PG-13; Violence: PG-13.  

Maisie Danger Brown has always wanted to be an astronaut, so when there’s a sweepstakes for Astronaut Camp she applies.  She was born without her right hand so she is surprised when her application is picked.  While at camp she meets a bad boy, Jonathan Wilder, and is put on a team with three other exceptionally smart kids.  They excel at camp and find themselves the winners of a ride in a space elevator to a shuttle station in space.  While there they come into contact with tokens that were recovered from an asteroid, the tokens enter into the teenagers and they find themselves with special strengths and they become a fireteam.  Their special strengths are closely monitored by the space camp and others who seek financial gain, but Maisie has to figure out the reason they were sent the tokens in the first place.  

I’m conflicted about my feelings for this book.  I couldn’t stop reading it because I had to know what the tokens were for and I wanted to see what Maisie was going to find out about the other kids in her group.  But there was so much action and moving around with subplots on top of subplots that at times it was too much.  It felt rushed and I couldn’t tell if it was going to be like Heroes, the TV series, or like the novel, The Host by Stephanie Meyer.  In the end it was a mixture of both and it was entertaining.  Shannon Hale knows how to weave an interesting story.  

MS, HS-ADVISABLE.  Reviewer, C. Peterson.