Me, the Missing, and the Dead by Jenny Valentine

Lucas is fifteen yeas old. His dad has been missing since he was ten. No one actually knows what happened to him. They found his abandoned car, but no dad. No one seems to care all that much anymore except for Lucas. He really wants to figure it out. Did his dad die? Or is he a cold-hearted jerk who abandoned his family? He doesn’t have much to go on until the fateful day he steps into the minicab office and spots Violet. After he meets her, everything starts to come into focus.

“Before then I’d never thought what it was actually like to be an old person. I’d just weave in and out of them on the pavement, and smirk with my friends at their funny hair and high-waisted trousers and the way they make paying for something at the checkout last for ages just to have someone to talk to. One minute the thought never crossed my mind, the next I was really and truly concerned about what it was like to be old and stuck in London, where everyone moved faster than you and even the simplest thing could end up taking all day. It was her. I know it was. It was my old lady, the dead one in the urn.”

So yah, Violet is dead. Lucas finds her in the minicab office and conspires with his grandmother to get her off the shelf so he can take her home. Clearly Lucas is not your ordinary teenage boy.

This book was absolutely hilarious and the writing was superb. The way that Lucas describes people, it is nothing short of wonderful. The book is a bit of a mystery, with Lucas slowly discovering what his dad was really like – there are clues littered throughout from belongings, to clues hidden in his grandfather’s Alzheimer stricken memory, but also is very much a coming of age story. The plot is actually quite intricate with interesting coincidences bringing increasing amounts of information to light.

And the ending…oh the ending. It was so fulfilling.

Run out and read this book!