Alaya Dawn Johnson (The Summer Prince) fills her modern-day thriller with spies, intrigue and a deadly pandemic, all filtered through the eyes of a teen who's growing resentful of her mother's oppressive attempts to control her life.
After eight days in a coma, 17-year-old Emily Bird wakes up in a hospital room. Washington, D.C., is in a panic over a serious new strain of flu, released by terrorists. Tanks patrol the streets and quarantines are in place. Emily has vague memories of being drugged at a party and taken away for questioning. She has no idea what her abductors wanted. But her parents are involved, as well as the CIA and a drug company so secretive that her mere mention of its name led her into this mess.
She begins calling herself Bird, questioning who she is and how she will lead her life. Once she was good-girl Emily, who studied hard and whose biggest act of rebellion was choosing Stanford over Yale. Now she questions not only her mother's choices for her, but also why Bird feels a need to fulfill them. With the help of the drug-dealing son of a Brazilian diplomat, Bird investigates what power she may have, both in her struggles with her mother and in the bigger challenge of a Washington under siege.
This fast-moving, compelling novel is complex and smoothly written. Johnson successfully balances issues of race and social responsibility alongside the more personal concerns of a young woman verging on adulthood. --Lynn Becker, host of Book Talk, the monthly online discussion of children's books for the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators