Now: Becca, a senior in high school, has created as “normal” a life as one can, given her circumstances. She’s kept everyone at arm’s length, never letting anyone come to close to her life for fear they’ll discover who her father really is. She’s in the top of her class at her small Ohio high school, has a job, and plans to truly start her life over once she can escape to college. The problem is where to apply and how to pay for school: since their lives were completely overhauled, both Becca and her mom have stayed away from the internet, social networking, and online forms and information gathering sites; but all colleges and financial aid sites now rely on web-based forms, applications, and correspondence. Outraged by her mom’s suggestion that she wait a few more years to apply to school until her dad’s prison term is up, Becca applies for a seemingly too-good-to-be-true local scholarship that offers a free, full ride to any school of the winner’s choice, renewable for all four years.
Problems arise even before Becca hits “send” on her scholarship application as the mysteries from her past come rushing forward into her present-day existence, haunting her, terrifying her, and making Becca mistrust herself and everyone around her. Frightening as these “ghosts” from the past are, Becca soon discovers very real, imminent danger lurking in the background as her mother reveals the far more complicated and dangerous reasons behind their years of hiding out and avoiding the all-pervasive internet. The question soon becomes whether or not Becca can stay one step ahead of the people and technology that seem hell-bent on destroying her.
In full ride, Margaret Peterson Haddix produces another intriguing, thrilling mystery where what the reader (and the main character) thought you knew isn’t entirely true and there’s a lot more beneath the surface waiting to be discovered. At one point I was on the edge of my seat, hoping that Becca’s entire story was going to go in a completely unexpected, unreliable narrator direction; while my speculation didn’t turn out to be the case, I was nevertheless pleasantly caught up in where Haddix did end up taking the plot and didn’t leave feeling disappointed by this identity-questioning, coming of age, technology-laced mystery.
- Posted by Cori