Friday Favorites: The Missing Series

The Missing by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Recommended for: ages 10 and up

Rating: PG (for violence)

  Thirteen-year-old Jonah has always known that he was adopted, and he's never thought it was a big deal. Then he and a neighbor, Chip, who finds out he's also adopted, begin receiving mysterious letters, saying things such as: "You are one of the missing," and, "Beware! They're coming back to get you."
  

 Jonah, Chip, and Jonah's little sister Katherine are plunged into a mystery that involves the FBI, a vast smuggling operation, an airplane that appeared out of nowhere; and people who seem to disappear and reappear at will...and make a staggering discovery. 

 This is a newer favorite and last year I did a review about Found, but I wanted to do a favorites review on the whole series.

 These books are a lot about time travel and some mysteries in history. Since last year I got into a show about time travel, it was easy to get into a book about it. The time travel is done very well, better than most time travel stories. In the first book, there is a lot of mystery as to what is going on. I already knew the premise of the series, so it wasn't all that mysterious. For the first couple of books I could get annoyed with Jonah for not knowing history, because I knew a little about the events that they experienced, until the fiction came in. Then when it came to the fifth and sixth books, there were parts of history that I knew nothing about. I enjoyed learning about the historical events in 5 and 6 and reading the Author's notes at the end, which tells what is fiction and what is real. Something that I also enjoyed in this series is how Jonah and his sister Katherine's relationship improves throughout the series. There are several twists in the series and, of course, as there is in almost all time travel story, messed up history.

 The seventh book was very different from the rest of the series and it is very confusing. It has a lot to do with paradoxes and messed up history and time collapsing. I enjoyed this book and it reveals something that you will want to know from the first book. One of the best things about this series is that the last book hasn't even come out yet. I look forward to reading it, especially because of how the last one ended.

 These books are pretty easy reads and I would recommend these books, especially if you are interested in some of the disappearances that happened in history.