On Edge
A Freerunner Mystery
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Emanuella "LL" Harvey puts her gymnastic skills to good use as a member of her brother's Parkour group. Free running, jumping, and climbing over their corner of the city like it's an obstacle course gives them something to take pride in and keeps them out of trouble—sort of. But trouble finds LL when she runs into Haze, a talented graffiti artist whose sister Heather was murdered two years before.
Freerunner and Writer promptly fall in love, but they decide to hide their relationship till they're sure it's the real thing—and until they can find a way to placate LL's hotheaded brother, who has it in for Haze and his gang. But when portraits of LL done in Haze's distinctive style start popping up on city walls, all hell breaks loose.
LL's brother threatens a gang war, which LL tries to avert by identifying the Writer who is really responsible for the paintings. But when another teen is murdered, it looks bad for Haze, especially when LL discovers that Heather's killer and her portrait-painter are one and the same.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With a dash of Shakespearean flair, Price's debut vaults the rooftops and skims the alleys of teen angst, family, and relationships with only a few tumbles. Ellie is a high school gymnast by day and a parkour/freerunning aficionado at night, along with her brother. When she meets handsome graffiti artist Haze, the battle between the traceurs and taggers heats up with the intensity of a gang war, something already plaguing their newly consolidated high school. Distorted likenesses of Ellie begin showing up on local buildings just as similar portraits of Haze's sister appeared before her murder. What the novel lacks in flow it makes up for in action and character development. It's difficult to suspend disbelief regarding some of the details that lead to the final confrontation, as well as plot threads that are left dangling (such as Ellie's hopes for a gymnastics scholarship). While Price doesn't fully dive into the cultures of freerunning and graffiti, the novel offers a fresh voice and opens the door to dialogue about what constitutes criminality. Ages 14 up.
