A Dash of Complications
Whatever Happened to Janie?
By Caroline B. Cooney
The Janie Johnson Series, Book 2
# Pgs: 224
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Overview:
As Janie Johnson glanced at the face of the ordinary little girl on the milk carton, she was overcome with shock. She recognized that little girl—it was she. How can it possibly be true? But it is.
With the mystery of her kidnapping now unraveled, Janie's story continues, and the nightmare is not over. No one can bring back or relive the 12 years gone by. The Spring family wants justice, but who is really to blame? The Johnsons know that they must abide by the court decisions made, but it's difficult to figure out what's best for everyone.
Janie Johnson or Jenny Spring? Who is she? Certainly there's enough love for everyone, but how can the two separate families live happily ever after?
The members of two families have their lives disrupted when a teenage girl who had been kidnapped twelve years earlier discovers that the people who raised her are not her biological parents. Sequel to "The Face on the Milk Carton."
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Review:
I liked this book only a slight bit more than the first book. The resolution to the climax was a little bit of a shift for me to get in to, from where the first book left off to what was happening currently. It was kind of a tough love to read once I realized exactly what was happening to Janie and her family.
I felt terrible for a good portion of the book, my compassion for the main character eating me alive. Cooney's books definitely make you think. On the one hand, you have the family that you love with all your heart, the family that raised you; and on the other there's the family that continued to love you, miss you, want you back, the family that looked for you for all the years that you were gone, that needed you to feel normal. It was almost tough to read, the kind of emotions this book inspired.
Janie, in this book, becomes the most desperately confused child that I've read about recently. It got to a point where her vulnerablilty, her stubborn rebelliousness and rude behaviour, made me want to take this character under my wing. I mean, I can't 'cause I'm real and Janie's a fictional character, but I'm a sucker for looking out for people. I worry about everyone, though I don't let anyone else know that. Janie's troubles make me wish that I could just reach through the pages to reassure her. I wouldn't necessarily agree with the choices that she made involving her two families, or the way she acted on them, but I can understand why she would do that. Her one family might love her, might miss her, might be her biological family, but as far as she is concerned her other family, the family within which she was raised, that she loves; that's her real family.
The cover of the book is a mite bit misleading, especially since the call happened in the first book and it wasn't as all dark and dangerous as this one implies. Though maybe it's supposed to have a symbolic meaning, now that I think about it. That one phone call changed Janie's life, and now she's almost trapped in this moment of her life, she's trapped with being removed from the family she loves to the family that wants her home safe.
It's a story about emotional suffering. It's touching to read, heart breaking even. You can see how much her biological family loves her, and how much she doesn't want to go to live with them regardless of the fact that she was kidnapped. She feels terrible, because she doesn't want to have to choose one family over the other, except that she does and she feels like she has to. For her, she has no memories of her biological family except for some scattered moments here and there. For her, her adoptive/kidnapped parents are her real parents. It's terrible, because everyone's trying to do the right thing and everyone's suffering because of it. The parents that raised her, the Johnson's, are trying so hard to encourage their sort of daughter to get to know the parents she never had a chance to know. They never really had a choice in the matter of her leaving them though, and it's tearing her apart. They already lost one daughter. Yet the other family already lost one daughter. Both families lost a daughter, both families don't want to lose another daughter, Janie is left without much of a choice, and since both families are trying so hard to do the right thing.
If anything, Cooney's series is something to think about. A scenario that makes sense, but is none the less conflicting. Who? What? When? Where? Why?
As the second book is better than the first, I'm not going to put an age recommendation on this one. So I'd recommend this book to mystery, drama lovers. There's a lot of drama in this book series. I'd rate this book a three or four out of five. With the second book, I'm beginning to really like this series.
With that in mind, thanks for reading~
It's a story about emotional suffering. It's touching to read, heart breaking even. You can see how much her biological family loves her, and how much she doesn't want to go to live with them regardless of the fact that she was kidnapped. She feels terrible, because she doesn't want to have to choose one family over the other, except that she does and she feels like she has to. For her, she has no memories of her biological family except for some scattered moments here and there. For her, her adoptive/kidnapped parents are her real parents. It's terrible, because everyone's trying to do the right thing and everyone's suffering because of it. The parents that raised her, the Johnson's, are trying so hard to encourage their sort of daughter to get to know the parents she never had a chance to know. They never really had a choice in the matter of her leaving them though, and it's tearing her apart. They already lost one daughter. Yet the other family already lost one daughter. Both families lost a daughter, both families don't want to lose another daughter, Janie is left without much of a choice, and since both families are trying so hard to do the right thing.
If anything, Cooney's series is something to think about. A scenario that makes sense, but is none the less conflicting. Who? What? When? Where? Why?
As the second book is better than the first, I'm not going to put an age recommendation on this one. So I'd recommend this book to mystery, drama lovers. There's a lot of drama in this book series. I'd rate this book a three or four out of five. With the second book, I'm beginning to really like this series.
With that in mind, thanks for reading~
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