Review Detail

Reader reviewed by bookworm9

Twelve-year-old Penny is looking forward to another summer of bumming around with her friends Mac, Benji, and Oren, and her younger brother, Teddy. But when Caleb Devlin arrives back in town after several years in a home for juvenile delinquents, rumors are flying about the horrible crimes he commited in the past. Then new mysteries start popping up, like missing pets and a fire in the kids' tree fort. People are injured, and then someone is murdered. But Penny has her own secret-- she knows it isn't Caleb. But who is the murderer...and will Penny live to find out?

First off, I'd like to say that I enjoyed Holm's historical fiction ("Our Only May Amelia" and the Boston Jane series), and was expecting good things from "The Creek." Unfortunately, she didn't deliver. Writing a suspense thriller for the middle school crowd is ambitious, and perhaps Holm should stick to historical fiction.

From the beginning, I was annoyed by the setting, which seemed straight out of a sixties sitcom, yet was apparently supposed to be present day. There is a brief mention of video games, and one or two expressions that are obviously current, but other than that the characters seem stuck in a time warp. They had names like Penny and Mac and Benji and Becky and Betty Ann. The kids are always playing outside, best friends because they are neighbors. I realize this was supposed to be a "hick suberb," but even hick suburban kids have computers. Holm should have placed her story in another error; it would have seemed more realistic.

Secondly, the story itself just bothered me. Caleb remains too much a shadowy horror movie figure, and Penny's erotic dreams about him, while intriguing, become disturbing because they are never explored. Holm boarders on creating a great portrayal of a tomboy teetering on the brink of womanhood, but she never fleshes out this theme sufficiently. As for the mystery, I admit I fell for Holm's red herrings, but the actual culprit came so much out of left field that it was disappointing. The scary scene was too brief, and the ending on the whole seemed rushed, with so much left unexplained and Penny herself never really developing as a character.