How To Raise Your Blood Pressure On a Snow Day

Okay, so perhaps it wasn't the best idea in the world to read TRAPPED by Michael Northrop on the fourth snow day in three weeks. Luckily, it was kind of a wimpy one where is stopped snowing by noon and the indentured servants I refer to as my children had dug out the driveway so I knew I could get to quickie mart if I had a snacking emergency. Nonetheless, this book scared the bejeebers out of me!

The plot is - three pals stay after school to work on a project. It starts snowing and it never stops. They are trapped with 4 other students from different social groups and they have to survive the worst blizzard in the history of blizzards. It is like THE BREAKFAST CLUB with less pot and more snow.

Northrop does a fantastic job of setting the tone in the first chapter. He describes the snow and really piles it on. (Get it? Piles it on? Oh...hee hee...) The introductions of the main characters are clear and you don't need to go flipping back and forth to remember who is who. And the story is just fantastic.

It is every kids dream, stuck in the high school with the smoking hot girl of your dreams, license to smash things up and break down locked doors if necessary. And yet, it all goes terribly, terribly wrong because it NEVER STOPS SNOWING!!

Did I mention that I read this on a snow day? I don't want to give away too much of the plot, so I will just say that I stayed up late in to the wee hours of the night finishing it. (Ten thirty, I stayed up 'til! I haven't seen ten thirty since my youth!) It was a suspenseful story with realistic likable (usually) characters that begs to be read in one sitting. Preferably when it is NOT snowing.