4 stars because I loved some of these characters so much. You really need to suspend your feelings of disbelief. Two girls, ages 14 and probably 16, take off on a road trip to track down the guy who kidnapped Andi, the 16-year-old girl. Neither girl has their license but they manage to drive over 800 miles from Sante Fe to Idaho Falls. Andi can bluff her way through any situation, including going white water rafting on a level 4 river with no, that's right, zero experience. And she has amnesia. So, like I said, just don't think too hard. The girls run into lots of bad people doing bad things. Andi is heartbreaking in her desperate attempt to find out who she really is. At the same time, you just have to love her tenacious outlook on things. This girl could save the world if she put her mind to it. It's fun to watch 14-year-old Mary learn from Andi that she has some power over the things in her life, in spite of her frustration with Andi's techniques. Lots of other characters to steal your heart. And creepy bad guys. Before this, I had only read Grimes' Richard Jury series, which takes place in England. I found it surprising that she could so easily create a story in the southwest U.S.
This was my first Martha Grimes book. I read the entire book and felt it fell flat on itself in the end. The story is about a young girl who wakes up in a bed and breakfast but can't remember anything. The owner, tells her that her "daddy" went into town. She feels deep within her, that this man is not her "daddy" and escapes the b&b and lives in the mountain range for 4 months, during which time, her memory does not return. She calls herself Andi and rescues animals caught in leg traps in the wild. M. Grimes paints a picture of illegal trapping and what torture animals go through at the hands of mankind. The story progresses when Andi befriends Mary, an orphan. Together, the 2 underage girls head off to find "daddy" on little information. As they travel along, Andi weaves tales of her past, that might sound sensible if they weren't entirely fiction. I enjoyed the manner which Grimes details the trip and the wilderness, it made it seem as though I was there. But that writing style, for me, was not enough to keep the story-line alive.
Do You like book Biting The Moon (2000)?
I'm on a Grimes spree and thought it was time I read a little of Andi Oliver. So, Biting the Moon which is a reference to coyotes in an Indian parlance, the same that Andi saves from traps near where she's hiding out in the Sandia Mountains in the bitter cold and snow. She cleans their wounds, but needs sometimes to inject them with, a little something to put them slightly asleep, to allow her to do her work. It is while stealing some of this drug that she meets and befriends Mary Dark Hope, who first takes Andi home with her and then is taken away by Andi in her search for the mysterious man who had kidnapped her, from whom she's been running for four long months. Their odyssey is as strange as the original, partly because Andi is an original and the end of it all is . . . for you to find out when you read this very diverting book.
—Lynne-marie
I listened to this book on tape otherwise I'm not sure I would have exerted the effort to finish. It's not that I didn't enjoy it; it was just so outlandish it seemed ridiculous after a while. Animal cruelty/child molestation/amnesia/kidnapping/murder/river rafting/canned hunts/pharmacy robbery all wound together and not particularly related - well not very well anyway. It was just kind of weird. Of course, like I said, I listened to the whole thing so it must have had some redeeming qualities and it did - likeable characters.
—Peggy
This is a story about a teenager who suddenly wakes up in a bed and breakfast in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has no knowledge who she is or how she arrived at the inn. With little to aid her in discovering her past beyond a backpack labeled with the initials A.O., she decides to name herself Andi Olivier.She meets up with another teenage girl and they set out to track down Andi's identity. The plot is a bit far fetched requiring great leaps of the imagination. You must accept some events. Though the actual likelihood two teenage girls who don't drive can get from Santa Fe to Utah without incident, meet the people they meet, have the conversations they have, involve themselves in a variety of activities, and never get questioned is a little too much.Entertaining read though.
—Wanda
