Shock Wave

Jake has grown up in the military. His father died in the army, and his mother is getting intense treatment for PTSD. So, Jake is spending the summer at his uncle’s cabin on Shuswap Lake in the interior of British Columbia. One night, an attractive young woman, perhaps a bit older than he, rides a jet ski across the lake and stops at his dock. She is dressed in an alluring black bikini, long red hair flowing down her back. Jake finds it extremely difficult to say no to her and reluctantly agrees to help her with a crazy scheme. The plan is to take Jake’s uncle’s boat to a houseboat in the middle of the lake.

The girl, who gives her name as ‘Angela’, tells Jake she is playing a night-time game with friends and that she is the ‘assassin’. Her role is to sneak onto the houseboat unheard and put red lipstick on the foreheads of the people sleeping on the houseboat. This is the sign that they have been caught by the assassin. Angela want to use Jake’s uncle’s boat because its electric and so much quieter than gas-propelled motor boats. Jake isn’t sure Angela is telling the truth – or the entire truth – but he decides to play along and take her to the houseboat.

It turns out ‘Angela’ is actually Ashley, and she and a friend have been sneaking onto houseboats for months and robbing the boaters of any valuables. This time, Ashley messes with the wrong guy as she grabs a very expensive watch worth more than a new car as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in a nondescript bag. Ashley disappears, leaving Jake to deal with the very powerful and angry man who threatens to burn down his uncle’s house and hurt Jake’s mother if the money isn’t returned soon. Suddenly, Jake has many problems. He needs to find Ashley fast and try to keep the thugs from beating him up, hurting his mother and burning down his uncle’s cabin. How will Jake solve these conundrums?

Shock Wave is part of the “Orca Soundings” series, books with reading levels between grade 2 and grade 4.5 and written specifically for teens who are reluctant readers and/or challenged readers. The stories are fast-paced and mostly plot driven with lots of exciting and often dangerous incidents throughout the story.

Shock Wave reads like a James Bond adventure, complete with sexy girls, gangsters, guns and violence. I’m sure the opening of the novel will grab most teen boys’ attention with the beautiful and scantily bikini-clad young woman standing on the dock, dripping water and asking for help. In this day and age, I question the need to have this scene. Surely a sophisticated and confident young woman who knows what she wants would be powerful, attractive and interesting, as well. This scene feels a bit like a throwback to the 1960s before the awareness of women’s rights. I hope that we have moved past the need to have scenes like this in books for young adults. For these reasons, I recommend this book with reservations.